Kuwait Times

North Koreans pay tribute to Kim’s father in freezing cold

‘The great leaders are regarded as our own parents’

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PYONGYANG: The Day of the Shining Star dawned bitterly cold in Pyongyang. But thousands of North Koreans lined up in temperatur­es of minus 8 degrees Celsius yesterday to pay their respects to late leader Kim Jong Il on his birthday. Kim, the son of the isolated North’s founder Kim Il Sung and the father and predecesso­r of current leader Kim Jong Un, was born on February 16.

According to Pyongyang’s orthodoxy, he came into the world in 1942, in a snow-covered hut at a secret camp on the slopes of Mount Paektu, the spiritual birthplace of the Korean people, where his father was fighting occupying Japanese forces. Outside historians point instead to official Soviet records, which say he was born a year earlier in a Siberian village where Kim Il Sung was in exile. Either way, it is a key anniversar­y in a nuclear-armed nation whose people are taught from birth to revere the “Paektu bloodline”, as the Kim family which has ruled it for three generation­s is known.

Referred to as the Day of the Shining Star, the occasion is celebrated with flower shows, mass dances in the capital and elsewhere, and laudatory tributes in state media, all reinforcin­g the underlying narrative. Driver Kim Chol Jun, 42, took his two boys to Mansu Hill, where giant statues of the two older Kims look out over the capital, to pay his respects to them and the current leader. “No sons and daughters feel tired when they visit their parents,” he said. “The great leaders are regarded as our own parents, so I visit here to bow before our parents with my sons.” Ordinary North Koreans consistent­ly express unequivoca­l support for the leadership and its policies when speaking to foreign media.

Silver screen

Snow dusted the two monumental panels — one to the fight against Japanese occupiers, the other to the building of socialism — that flank the statues, their faces bathed in the light of the rising sun as small children swept the steps clean. In pride of place before the bronze effigies stood a large floral tribute emblazoned with the name of Kim Jong Un, who is due to hold his second summit with US President Donald Trump at the end of the month.

Pyongyang is under multiple internatio­nal sanctions over its pursuit of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, which Washington is pressing it to give up. North Korea has rejected demands for what it calls its “unilateral” disarmamen­t. At the statues, groups ranging from couples and families to hundreds-strong detachment­s of workers or soldiers assembled turn by turn in front of the images.

After placing individual blooms or flower baskets before the figures, they lined up as an announcer intoned: “Let us pay tribute”, and bowed deeply, the military personnel saluting. Kim Jong Il died in 2011 and his remains are preserved in a palatial mausoleum on the outskirts of Pyongyang, but officially he remains Eternal General Secretary of the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea. — AFP

 ??  ?? PYONGYANG: People gather as they wait to pay their respects before the statues of late North Korean leaders Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il as part of celebratio­ns marking the birthday of late North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, known as the ‘Day of the Shining Star’, on Mansu hill. — AFP
PYONGYANG: People gather as they wait to pay their respects before the statues of late North Korean leaders Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il as part of celebratio­ns marking the birthday of late North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, known as the ‘Day of the Shining Star’, on Mansu hill. — AFP

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