A French brain surgeon with links to North Korea denied he was treating the communist country’s ailing leader, Kim Jong-il. Yet Japanese TV filmed what appeared to be neurosurgeon Francois-Xavier Roux boarding a plane for the North Korean capital.
A case of mistaken identity? Or was Roux on a secret mission to care for the nuclear-armed nation’s leader, who reportedly suffered a stroke and underwent brain surgery in August?
Roux said no, but as so often with North Korea there were more questions than answers with the story.
Earlier this week, Japan’s Fuji TV reported that a man thought to be Kim’s eldest son, Kim Jong-nam, flew to Paris to recruit a neurosurgeon to treat his father.
Fuji also aired footage showing a Caucasian man resembling Roux at both a Paris airport and one in Beijing, where he looked like he was about to board Air China flight CA121 for Pyongyang, North Korea.
So, what was going on?
“I don’t know,” Roux said on Thursday, reached by reporters on his cellphone in Beijing. “I am not very sure what these images correspond to.”
Beijing is a jump-off point for North Korea, but Roux said he was in the Chinese capital for a meeting of brain surgeons and had not been to Pyongyang recently.
Roux acknowledged that, if he had been recruited by the North to treat Kim, he most likely would be unable to talk about it.
But he said: “That is not the case here.”
Secrecy and North Korea go hand-in-hand. When Kim’s father, North Korean founder Kim Il-sung, died in 1994, it took more than a day for word to reach the outside world. News of Kim Jong-il’s apparent stroke in mid-August did not emerge until weeks later, and the North Korean government and state-run media still deny he is ill.
One of the world’s most isolated nations, North Korea preaches a philosophy of economic self-reliance.
But if it had to recruit a Western medical expert for Kim, Roux might fit the bill.
The 57-year-old Roux, co-author of Diode Lasers in Neurosurgery, heads the neurosurgery department at Paris’ Sainte-Anne hospital, built by Napoleon III in 1867 and specializing in neuroscience and psychiatry.
Furthermore, North Korea seems to trust him. Roux said his contacts with the country date back over a decade, and that he last visited Pyongyang in April to do training and teaching.
“Why 15 years ago did they start to contact me? I have no idea. It’s always been a little mystery for me,” he said on Thursday.
Roux confirmed information from Fuji TV that a car belonging to North Korea’s mission to UNESCO, the UN’s Paris-based cultural arm, drove him to Paris’ Charles de Gaulle airport last week for his flight to Beijing.
“I think they were coming to collect someone, and so they kindly asked me if it would be of help to me if they dropped me off, because I have regular contacts with them and because two or three days earlier I had seen a Korean,” Roux said.
That Korean, he said, was a regular patient who “comes to France roughly once a year for a medical checkup.”
“Now I read in the press that the Korean could be one of the sons of their leader. Frankly, I have no idea about that,” he said.
Roux said the patient, like many Koreans, has the surname Kim, but did not introduce himself as Kim Jong-il’s son. Roux said he and the patient did not discuss Kim Jong-il.
“You never know who is who,” Roux said. “They are all called Kim and they are very secretive.”
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