Seoul, South Korea ? North Korea’s Kim Jong Il is on the road to recovery from a stroke and still in control of his isolated country’s communist regime, South Korea suggested Wednesday, disputing reports that Kim is gravely ill.

President Lee Myung-bak convened a meeting of top security ministers, who were briefed on intelligence that indicates Kim was recovering, said Lee Dong-kwan, the president’s chief spokesman.

The North Korean leader was currently “not seen to be in a serious condition,” the spokesman said in a statement after the meeting late Wednesday, citing the contents of the briefing.

Today, South Korean media reported that Kim had brain surgery after suffering a stroke about Aug. 15.

South Korea’s Dong-a Ilbo and JoongAng Ilbo newspapers said foreign doctors, possibly from China and France, performed the operation, and Kim’s condition has improved and he suffers no slurring of speech, which is usually involved in stroke.

But the newspaper Chosun Ilbo reported, citing an unnamed senior government official, that Kim had “partial paralysis.” The official was quoted as saying Kim was “suffering inconvenience on the left part of his body.”

Speculation that Kim may have become ill intensified after he missed a parade Tuesday commemorating the communist state’s founding.