The ultimate life holiday in the hermit kingdom is April 15, the anniversary of the country’s first dictator, known as the “Day of the Sun”. It’s a day that usually includes a massive military parade and synchronized public performances, involving tens of thousands of people.
But on Thursday, The Korean Central News Agency said an organization of senior government officials, the party and the military paid tribute to Kumsusan’s Palace of the Sun for Kim Il Sung’s 108th birthday.
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North Korea’s state media does not mention whether current leader Kim Jong Un visited the mausoleum where the bodies of his grandfather and father, Kim Jong-il, are located. State media told only that “baskets of flowers were placed on statues of the wonderful leaders and mosaics depicting their smiling images.”
According to South Korean news firm Yonhap, Kim has not skipped a stopover in the mausoleum during the holidays since his legacy of strength in 2011. State media regularly reports on on-site stopovers the same day or the next morning.
The official newspaper of North Korea’s ruling party, Rodong Sinmun, did not show it either, but a basket of flowers wrapped in a banner with his name on it.
Some North Korean observers have speculated that Kim may have skipped it due to considerations over COVID-19. The hermit’s kingdom repeated several times that there had not been a case of singles on its soil, but had implemented measures of social estrangement.
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Last March, Japanese newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun reported that more than a hundred North Korean infantrymen stationed on the border with China were killed by the virus. South Korean newspaper Chosun Ilbo also claimed kim spends “a lot of time” outside the capital, Pyongyang, because of the virus.
But a South Korean Unification Ministry official told Yonhap that Kim visited the mausoleum in mid-February for his father’s birthday when the coronavirus pandemic accelerated in the region.
“It would be very rare for Kim not to pass by,” the official said Thursday on anonymity. “There may only be analysis, adding the simplest connection to COVID-19, but we want more time for ours.”
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In April, North Korea published photographs of Kim overseeing a motor drill and in an assembly of the ruling Korean Workers’ Party in Pyongyang. We still don’t know when the photographs were taken.
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Others, that skipping Wednesday’s ceremonies was more similar to the fact that the existing dictator sought to distance himself from his circle of relatives and show his own legacy.
“Kim Jong Un to break with the past, as well as the classic cult of the Northern personality,” Ahn Chan-il, a North Korean defector and researcher in Seoul, told the France-Presse agency.
“He needs to pose as an elegant and competent leader, who as a descendant of his predecessors,” he told the news agency. “And it needs to gradually mitigate the idolatry of the two deceased leaders because it opposes its schedule to stigmatize the North as a “normal state.”
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Another North Korean observer noted that the country had performed an “exceptionally discreet commemoration” for this year’s vacation.
“This may be just one component of North Korea’s ongoing propaganda effort to remove Kim Jong Un from the legacy of his grandfather and father, a trend noticed from the time of last year, with the North’s handling of the anniversary of the component’s founding in October. 2019 is an example,” said Minyoung Lee, North Korea’s media and leadership expert.
The celebrations in North Korea have been much quieter this year, with no large-scale events. A primary marathon was also canceled in Pyongyang to commemorate the holiday, according to Yonhap.
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Foreign experts have questioned the claim that there is a single coronavirus infection on North Korean soil.
“It’s so that North Korea doesn’t have a case of coronavirus in singles,” Jung H. Pak, a former CIA analyst on North Korea, in the past told Fox News.
As of Thursday morning, there were at least 2,076,015 cases of COVID-19 and at least 138,008 deaths worldwide, according to Johns Hopkins University.
Barnini Chakraborty, Katherine Lam and Associated Press of Fox News contributed to the report.