Anyone picked up Radio Pyongyang recently? What are they saying about
the Dear Leader?

From Times of London
"North Korean leader suffers from kidney failure that requires
dialysis, and also has partial paralysis after a 2008 stroke, South
Korea claims.

The North Korean leader Kim Jong Il is suffering from kidney failure
which requires dialysis and also has partial paralysis following a
2008 stroke, according to the head of a South Korean state research
institute.

Nam Sung-Wook, director of the Institute for National Security
Strategy, said the paleness of Kim's fingernails indicates the 68-year-
old leader has chronic kidney disease.

The institute has links to South Korea's National Intelligence
Service. Nam's remarks, in a speech at a Seoul forum, were quoted by
South Korea’s Yonhap news agency and were confirmed by the organizers
of the event.

"Chairman Kim Jong Il is suffering from diabetes and high blood
pressure and we believe he is undergoing kidney dialysis every two
weeks," Nam said. "[The pale color of] his nails indicates he has
chronic kidney failure."

Nam showed photographs of Kim to illustrate his point. The North's
official Korean Central News Agency frequently releases color photos
of the leader.

"However, it's not an easy task for him to restore his full health
because of his age," Nam said. "At his most recent public appearance
on the occasion of a public rally in [the northeastern city of]
Hamhung on March 7, he was slamming down his right palm on his
unmoving left palm."

The leader of the secretive nuclear-armed communist state has not
publicly appointed an eventual successor, but the regime is reportedly
promoting the virtues of his third son, Kim Jong-Un.

Kim's regime is under pressure to return to six-nation nuclear
disarmament talks which it abandoned last April."