Maybe Kim Jong Il Didn't Die on a Train...

South Korean intelligence indicates that's not what really happened
By Kate Seamons,  Newser Staff
Posted Dec 21, 2011 9:38 AM CST
Maybe Kim Jong Il Didn't Die on a Train...
In this Aug. 20, 2002 file photo, North Korean leader Kim Jong Il's armored train arrives at the Russian border railway station of Khasan.   (AP Photo/Igor Kochetkov, File)

Kim Jong Il died on a moving train—or so North Korea would have us believe. But the Los Angeles Times reports that South Korean intelligence is painting a different picture. It seems that the country's No. 1 spy, Won Sei-hoon, has reviewed satellite photos that depict Kim's armored train ... stationary, and sitting in a Pyongyang station at the time he reportedly died. "There were no signs the train ever moved," Won apparently told officials.

Why would they have fibbed? Some believe that the time and place could "somehow be sensitive" to the officials overseeing the transition of power, notes the Times. But dying on a "field guidance tour" sounds more heroic than wheezing, sickly, in bed—which is where rumors place him in his final moment. (More Kim Jong Il stories.)

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