The country's state media published a photograph this week of Kim holding a cigarette in his hand, with smoke permeating from the tip -- in the middle of a North Korea anti-smoking drive.
The photo was snapped while Kim was "providing field guidance to the remodeled Mangyongdae Children's Camp," in the capital Pyongyang, according to state-run news agency KCNA.
The sight of Kim smoking comes as a surprise, as the country is in the midst of what North Korean state newspaper's Rodong Sinmun calls a "brisk" anti-tobacco campaign sponsored by the government in a country which has a very large smoking population. According to the World Health Organisation, over half of North Korean men were smokers in 2012.