Embedded video from CNN Video

In what, for the family of North Korea’s “Dear Leader,” Kim Jong-il, is something close to a media blitz, a man believed to be Kim Jong-nam, the leader’s eldest son, has appeared on two Japanese television stations in the past week to say that, really, he’s fine with not being chosen to eventually succeed his father.

Given the reclusive nature of the regime in North Korea, and the erratic history of Kim Jong-nam himself — he last made headlines in 2001 with a failed attempt to visit Disneyland in Tokyo using a passport from the Dominican Republic — The Lede will follow the BBC’s lead in saying that the jovial, chuckling man in the two TV interviews, speaking English each time, is “believed to be Kim Jong-nam.”

Video of the first interview, conducted by a TV Tokyo reporter on the Chinese island of Macao, found its way to the BBC’s Web site on Sunday. In it, the man said that he had heard media reports of a decision by Kim Jong-il to pass over his first two sons and leave the prize, or chore, of one day leading the regime in Pyongyang to his third, Kim Jong-un. Had he been informed directly of the decision? The man, who said that he had not spoken to his father in some time, replied that his relationship with the North Korean government was “a very sensitive question, I can not answer.”

As David Sanger, Mark Mazzetti and Choe Sang-hun reported last week in The New York Times: “In recent weeks, North Korean diplomats abroad have been told to begin to pay homage to Kim Jong-un and some schoolchildren have reportedly been including his name in their songs.”

On Tuesday, CNN broadcast a similar, shorter interview (embedded above) that was also shot in Macao, this time by a crew from TV Asahi. In that one, the man claiming to be the 38-year-old Kim Jong-nam stressed that he was just “not interested” in the question of who will rule North Korea after his father’s death.

CNN reported on Tuesday that “there has been speculation that Kim Jong-nam would defect from North Korea and that a purge of his supporters was under way.” But the man insisted in the TV Tokyo interview that he “never defected from North Korea,” that he still lives in North Korea and that he was merely visiting Macao.

According to a report in the Macau Daily Times on Monday, “Jong-nam, who was born to a different mother than Jong-un’s, apparently spoiled his leadership prospects after being deported from Japan in 2001 for trying to enter the country on a forged passport.” The New York Times article noted that the strange 2001 episode “added to rumors that his judgment was less than reliable.”