The North Korean silence on the health condition of Kim Jong Un is deafening, as rumors range from him happily chilling in a resort to he is either comatose or dead after a failed heart procedure.

"None of us will know until either North Korea tells us, or he waddles back into view," The Washington Post's Anna Fifield wrote in an op-ed Sunday.

"This time, however, the rumors feel different. The talk that Kim Jong Un had some kind of heart surgery has had a stubborn persistence, making the real question his condition. Some experts agree that this time it seems like more than the usual scuttlebutt."

Pyongyang is reacting to the silence, engaging in panic buying, while helicopters are flying low over the capitol and train services have been disrupted, the Post's Kim biographer reported.

"We are potentially facing a serious crisis," historian Andrei Lankov, who believes something is "definitely wrong" with Kim, told the Post.

Rumors of North Korean dictator deaths have been premature before, including his father and himself (in 2004).

"There are plausible explanations for his absence, others say," she wrote. "Maybe Kim missed the ceremony on April 15 to mark his grandfather’s birth — the most important day on the North Korean calendar — because of concerns about coronavirus.

"Maybe Kim decided not to go because he's growing into the role. After all, he broke with tradition on New Year's Day and delivered a written plan for the year ahead instead of delivering it, State of the Union-style, as usual."

Kim has "no clear successor," she noted.

"He's believed to have one son but he's barely a toddler," she wrote. "He has an older brother, an Eric Clapton superfan who was reportedly passed over for being 'effeminate.' And an uncle, his father's half brother who had been ambassador in Eastern Europe — a sort of cushy exile for almost four decades until he was recently recalled to Pyongyang.

"The baby clearly isn't ready to lead, and the two others have no networks or profile inside North Korea."

Kim's younger sister Kim Yo Jong would be a candidate, but the regime has only passed the leadership on to male heirs.

"She has been issuing statements in her own name in recent weeks ­— another piece of kindling for the rumor fire — but she has no military credentials," according to the op-ed. "There has been no propaganda campaign around her. The state media has never even disclosed that she’s the First Sister.

"I can't see how Kim Yo Jong could become the leader," Fifield concluded. "But I also can't see how she could not become the leader. There's no one else."

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