Like with any report with Kim Jong-il it is best to treat them with a grain of salt until proven otherwise:

NORTH Korea’s Kim Jong-il collapsed last month, a South Korean official in Beijing has been quoted as saying, as analysts wonder whether the reclusive leader will appear at his state’s anniversary festivities today.

Kim, who is 66, overweight and plagued with chronic medical maladies, has been the subject of persistent rumours in the South about his health, but his actual condition is one of the secretive state’s most tightly guarded secrets.

“We have obtained intelligence that Defence Commission Chairman Kim Jong-il had collapsed on August 22,” the official with the South Korean embassy in Beijing was quoted as saying by the Chosun Ilbo newspaper today.

The same daily reported last week that five Chinese doctors have been visiting Pyongyang from late August to treat a high-level North Korean official, possibly Kim.

South Korea’s intelligence agency could not immediately confirm the report. [Reuters]