North Korea’s Latest Guessing Game: Did First Lady Have a Baby? - East Idaho News
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North Korea’s Latest Guessing Game: Did First Lady Have a Baby?

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GETTY W 1313 NKFirstLady?  SQUARESPACE CACHEVERSION=1357229365369KNS/AFP/Getty Images(SEOUL, South Korea) — Experts on North Korea have long studied photos of the country’s leaders trying to interpret the significance in the slightest change of body language, pose or position of hierarchy.

That intense scrutiny has now been turned on the wife of Kim Jong Un in a celebrity-like guessing game about whether she had been pregnant and may have given birth.  Or whether she simply gained weight and lost it again.

North Korea’s first lady Ri Sul Ju is believed to already have one child.

The secretive North Korean government has not confirmed any of these speculations.

The rumor mill started when North Korea’s Central News Agency released photos taken on Oct. 29 at a musical performance.  Ri was wearing a long yellow knit jacket with a bow on her stomach and her tummy bump raised questions: did she gain weight or is she pregnant?

It was difficult to tell but taking into account her fashion statement during the summer and fall of last year, sporting vivid colored fitted dresses and high-heel pumps, the loose cut jacket caught the eyes of North Korean watchers.

The next appearance by the first lady was on Dec. 17 at a memorial ceremony for Kim’s late father, Kim Jong Il, who died of a heart attack on 2011.  She was wearing the Korean traditional black funeral costume.  The form of the dress itself is supposed to be wide below the chest, but her swollen face and what looked like a tummy bump got the rumor swirling.

Then came the recent photo taken on New Year’s Day, when she was back to her signature Chanel-style round-neck pink jacket and skirt — and a visibly slimmer waistline.

Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio

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