Kim Jong-un underwent cosmetic surgery at the age of 27 to resemble his grandfather

There are many rumors that Kim Jong-un, the North Korean regime's successor, underwent cosmetic surgery to more closely resemble his revered grandfather, Kim Il-sung. Following the debut of the 27-year-old son of Kim Jong-first il's official photos last week, rumors started to circulate in South Korea. The photos depict an overweight, uneasy-looking young man receiving his four-star generalship and serving as deputy chairman of the Central Military Commission of the Workers' Party while seated in the first row of a crowded auditorium. The similarities between Kim Jong-un and Kim Il-family Sung are clear in the pictures. The Kim dynasty's youngest member shares his grandfather's round cheeks, double chin, and recognizable downward-curving lips. In fact, he is wearing his hair in the exact same way that his predecessor did: extremely short on the sides and swept back on top. The photos stand in sharp contrast to earlier ones, which show Kim as a scrawny adolescent who bears no resemblance to his paternal grandfather.

South Korean press said that he had surgery in the intervening years to improve his public image. The Dong-A Ilbo newspaper reported that Pyongyang wanted to make Kim the nation's future leader by having a "reincarnation of North Korea's late founder." According to Toshimitsu Shigemura, a professor at Tokyo's Waseda University and the author of many books on North Korean leadership, "many individuals in South Korea have pointed out that Kim's face is quite different from when he was young, notably the curve of his chin." "The transformation is pretty significant," he continued. "From prior images, everyone had noticed that he looked nothing like his grandpa." The JoongAng Sunday newspaper said that it had conducted three covert phone interviews with North Korean citizens and that similar rumors had been circulating in the country since the unveiling of their new leader-in-waiting.