Kim-dergarten: N Korea nursery pines for visit by Supreme Leader

HANOI: Wearing traditional dress, the children in Hanoi’s only North Korean-founded kindergarten belt out Korean songs and recite their Korean vocabulary-skills they hope to show off to Kim Jong Un when he visits Vietnam next week. The reclusive North Korean leader is making his first trip to Vietnam to meet with US President Donald Trump between February 27 and 28.

It is their second summit, during which Washington hopes to see progress on dismantling Pyongyang’s nuclear program. The serious summit agenda was far from the minds of toddlers at the Vietnam-DPRK Friendship Kindergarten yesterday. Instead the threeto-five-year-olds sang and danced in the ‘Kim Il Sung’ classroom named after Kim Jong Un’s grandfather, one of Hanoi’s closest allies during the Vietnam War.

“Jal gaseyo!” the kids chanted-goodbye in Koreanat the school where portraits of communist leaders past-Kim Il Sung, his son Kim Jong Il and Vietnam’s revolutionary leader Ho Chi Minh-hang on the wall. Established in 1978 at a time when conflict-battered Hanoi still received aid from Pyongyang, the school was built almost entirely with North Korean donations, from the blankets and mattresses for naptime to the bowls and utensils used at mealtime. Today some of the school’s 450 pupils learn about North Korean culture, from kimchi and kimbap to traditional dress, and occasionally receive visits from North Korean officials and embassy personnel. — AFP