How Kim Jong Un stole Christmas in North Korea
There’s one place where Christmas cheer will be in even shorter supply this year: North Korea.
Not content with banning Christmas in 2016, the country’s supreme grinch, Kim Jong Un, went further by prohibiting gatherings that involve alcohol and singing, according to South Korea’s National Intelligence Service (NIS).
The NIS said Kim’s measures are an attempt to stop dissent as sanctions imposed by the United Nations over his country’s nuclear program take hold.
North Korea “has devised a system whereby party organs report people’s economic hardships on a daily basis, and it has banned any gatherings related to drinking, singing and other entertainment and is strengthening control of outside information,” the NIS said, according to South Korean news agency Yonhap.
Opportunities to spread goodwill and cheer are dwindling in the repressive nation, which bans religious worship except for the founding first family. Last year, Kim banned the few practicing Christians in the country from celebrating Christmas and told them to celebrate his grandmother, Kim Jong Suk, who was born on Christmas Eve in 1919. A communist stalwart, the first wife of the country’s founding leader Kim Il Sung is known to North Koreans as “the Sacred Mother of the Revolution.”
Christmas trees with baubles and lights are displayed in upmarket shops and restaurants in Pyongyang, but there are no religious symbols.
Summer celebrations also suffered this year. In July, the North’s annual Taedonggang Beer Festival was canceled, probably because of drought.