Short version – “not dead,” as Sherlock Holmes told John Watson at the beginning of the third season of the popular BBC series. And it seems that Vice-Chairman Kim Yong Chol is even luckier than the great detective: not only is he not dead, but he has also not been purged, despite reports suggesting otherwise.

Knowing Kim Yong Chol, you could easily imagine him reading these reports with his signature smirk.

False reports are a common problem when dealing with North Korea, since there is so little known about the top elite. We don’t generally have such problems when discussing