SEOUL, South Korea — Even when Kim Jong Un was nowhere to be seen, he was everywhere.

From “Saturday Night Live” spoofs to the wild theories of journalists across the globe trying to parse his five-week absence from the public eye, the 30-ish leader of North Korea captured nearly as many headlines as he did when he threatened to nuke his enemies last year.

The mystery ended today when Kim appeared in state media, smiling broadly and supporting himself with a cane. While touring the newly built Wisong Scientists Residential District and another new institute in Pyongyang, Kim “took necessary steps with loving care,” a dispatch early today from the official Korean Central News Agency said in typical fawning style. The North didn’t say when the visit happened, nor did it address the leader’s health.

This bewildering ability to command attention by doing nothing says a lot about the North’s mastery of a propaganda apparatus that puts Kim at the center of everything. Remove for 40 days the sun around which that propaganda spins and the international media, both traditional and social, explode with speculation and rumors.

It also speaks to the fundamental difficulties everyone outside North Korea — academics, government officials, reporters — faces in understanding what’s really happening inside a small, poor, autocratic country that jealously guards its internal workings as it ignores demands by the U.S. and its powerful allies to give up its nuclear bombs.