Kim Jong Un May Have Had Surgery to Look Like Gramps

In older images, he looked skinny, had different chin
By Kevin Spak,  Newser Staff
Posted Oct 5, 2010 7:26 AM CDT
Kim Jong Un May Have Had Surgery to Look Like Gramps
A South Korean worker watches a TV news program showing North Korean leader Kim Jong Il's third son Kim Jong Un.   (AP)

Did Kim Jong Un, the son and anointed successor of Kim Jong Il, have plastic surgery to look like his grandfather? That’s what South Korean newspapers are speculating after North Korea released the first official shots of Kim Jong Un last week. In them, he looked like the spitting image of his grandfather, the extremely popular Kim Il Sung—with the same chubby cheeks, downturned mouth, and even the same haircut.

Which is surprising, experts say, because in earlier photos the boy looked nothing like that. “A lot of people in South Korea have pointed out that Kim’s face is very different from when he was young, particularly the shape of his chin,” one professor tells the Daily Telegraph. “The change is quite dramatic.” One South Korean paper even said that it had secretly interviewed three North Koreans, and discovered that the same speculation had flourished there, too. (More Kim Il-sung stories.)

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