North Korea wipes traces of Kim Jong Un after Beijing meeting with Putin

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By Ju-min Park and Josh Smith

SEOUL (Reuters) -After Kim Jong Un met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Beijing, North Korean staffers carefully wiped off items touched by the country’s supreme leader, in what analysts say is part of a suite of security measures to counter foreign spies.

Even with the appearance of budding friendship between Kim and Putin, footage on Wednesday showed the reclusive state’s extraordinary measures to conceal any clues about Kim’s health.

In a post on Telegram, Kremlin reporter Alexander Yunashev shared video of Kim’s two staff members meticulously cleaning the room in the Chinese capital where Kim and Putin met for more than two hours.

The chair’s backrest and armrests were scrubbed and a coffee table next to Kim’s chair was also cleaned. Kim’s drinking glass was also removed.

“After the negotiations were over, the staff accompanying the head of the DPRK carefully destroyed all traces of Kim’s presence,” the reporter said, referring to North Korea.

After talks in the room, Kim and Putin left for a tea meeting and bid a warm farewell to each other.

As during previous foreign trips, Kim packed his own toilet on a signature green train that took him to Beijing to hide health clues, Japan’s Nikkei newspaper reported, citing South Korean and Japanese intelligence agencies.

Such measures are standard protocol since the era of Kim’s predecessor, his father Kim Jong Il, said Michael Madden, a North Korea leadership expert with the U.S.-based Stimson Center.

“The special toilet and the requisite garbage bags of detritus, waste and cigarette butts are so that a foreign intelligence agency, even a friendly one, does not acquire a sample and test it,” Madden said.

“It would provide insight into any medical conditions affecting Kim Jong Un. This can include hair and skin tags,” he said.

In 2019, after a Hanoi summit with U.S. President Donald Trump, Kim’s guards were spotted blocking the floor of his hotel room to clean the room for hours, and taking out items including a bed mattress.

Kim’s team has been spotted meticulously cleaning items before he uses them as well.

During his 2018 meeting with then South Korean President Moon Jae-in, North Korean security guards sprayed a chair and a desk with sanitizer and wiped it down before Kim came to sit.

Before he sat at another summit with Putin in 2023, his security team wiped his chair down with disinfectant, and vigorously checked to make sure the chair was safe, with one of the guards using a metal detector to scan the seat, video footage showed.

(Reporting by Ju-min Park and Josh Smith; Editing by Lincoln Feast.)