Japanese media company Shukan Gendai is reporting that Kim Jong Un, the leader of North Korea, is seriously ill after undergoing emergency heart surgery.

As was previously reported by The Inquisitr, a team of doctors from China had allegedly been dispatched to the DPRK following uneven reports regarding the 36-year-old’s health.

Now, Shukan Gendai is reporting that one of the doctors from the team revealed details about the state of the communist leader, claiming that he was in a “vegetative state,” as translated by Taiwan News.

The doctor, who remained anonymous for safety reasons, also gave insight into what precipitated the reported heart surgery. He claimed that during a trip to the countryside, Chairman Kim suddenly fell while clutching his heart, forcing doctors to rush the communist leader to a hospital and offer him either a cardiac massage or CPR.

A cardiac massage is a similar procedure to CPR, and is a resuscitative procedure that uses the rhythmic compression of the chest and heart to restore blood circulation after cardiac arrest or ventricular fibrillation.

The doctor added that this was when North Korea asked China to send a medical team from Beijing as quickly as possible.

However, the doctor claimed that Kim’s condition was serious enough to convince North Korean officials that they could not wait for the Chinese medical team and that emergency surgery was necessary. The doctor who reportedly performed the operation was a North Korean heart surgeon who had trained in China for many years.

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The insider added that the surgery required was cardiac stent surgery, which he described as a fairly simple procedure that normally takes only a minute to perform, as translated by i24 News.

However, the surgeon reportedly became so nervous that his hands trembled. In addition, he had no experience operating on an obese body like Kim Jong Un’s. Kim also had other risk factors, such as being a lifelong smoker. As a result, the procedure reportedly lasted eight minutes.

It was during this time that the North Korean leader allegedly entered his vegetative state.

As previously reported by The Inquisitr, North Korea does not have a clear line of succession, and a power struggle would likely emerge should Chairman Kim die.

That said, despite the recent reports from Shukan Gendai, the rumors have not been verified, and a number of governments have released statements in recent days claiming that the accounts concerning Kim’s health have not been confirmed by their intelligence services.