Badges depicting North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, a key symbol of his personality cult, are disappearing from peoples' chests in the country, South Korean officials said yesterday.
Seoul's Unification Ministry confirmed that lapel badges of Kim were no longer worn by North Koreans travelling to China on official business.
In the past, they wore either a badge portraying Kim or a similar badge portraying his father, Kim Il-sung who died in 1994.
"North Koreans travelling to and from China who formerly wore the badge of either Kim Il-sung or Kim Jong-il on their chests, have stopped wearing the Kim Jong-il badge," ministry spokeswoman Yang Jong-hwa said, citing an internal report from the ministry's information analysis bureau.
"They are wearing only the Kim Il-sung badge," Yang said.
Ten years after his death the elder Kim is still revered in the North where he is frequently described as president for eternity.
But the pervasive personality cult built around his son appears to be shrinking. Reports of the disappearing lapel badges follow recent confirmation that Kim Jong-il's portraits have vanished from key sites visited by foreigners in Pyongyang.
The ministry is still analyzing the nature and significance of these changes, Yang said.
Media reports in the South said the phasing-out of the Kim Jong-il badges was widespread and affected business people, diplomats and other North Koreans who come into contact with foreigners.
"We learned recently that North Koreans at the country's foreign missions and trading companies, as well as those guiding foreigners inside the North are not wearing the Kim Jong-il badges," an unnamed Seoul official told the Seoul-based Joong-Ang Ilbo.
The official said Kim Jong-il himself ordered the Mansudae Art Studio, the North's main producer of propaganda materials, to stop manufacturing his badges late last year. He said North Koreans were told to take off their Kim Jong-il badges for the commemoration of the 10th anniversary of Kim Il-sung's death in July this year.
The apparent downsizing of the Kim cult of personality has led to speculation that changes may be taking place in the power structure of the tightly controlled communist country.
But Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Wu Dawei (
"The politics are stable, the economy is developing and the leaders are thinking seriously about economic reform," Wu Dawei told a briefing in Beijing as he described his September visit to Pyongyang.
Choson Sinbo, run by the pro-Pyongyang General Association of Korean Residents in Japan, said the measures reflected the "noble will of General Kim Jong-il who wants to hold up only President Kim Il-sung aloft."
Auschwitz survivor Eva Schloss, the stepsister of teenage diarist Anne Frank and a tireless educator about the horrors of the Holocaust, has died. She was 96. The Anne Frank Trust UK, of which Schloss was honorary president, said she died on Saturday in London, where she lived. Britain’s King Charles III said he was “privileged and proud” to have known Schloss, who cofounded the charitable trust to help young people challenge prejudice. “The horrors that she endured as a young woman are impossible to comprehend and yet she devoted the rest of her life to overcoming hatred and prejudice, promoting kindness, courage, understanding
Tens of thousands of Filipino Catholics yesterday twirled white cloths and chanted “Viva, viva,” as a centuries-old statue of Jesus Christ was paraded through the streets of Manila in the nation’s biggest annual religious event. The day-long procession began before dawn, with barefoot volunteers pulling the heavy carriage through narrow streets where the devout waited in hopes of touching the icon, believed to hold miraculous powers. Thousands of police were deployed to manage crowds that officials believe could number in the millions by the time the statue reaches its home in central Manila’s Quiapo church around midnight. More than 800 people had sought
‘DISRESPECTFUL’: Katie Miller, the wife of Trump’s most influential adviser, drew ire by posting an image of Greenland in the colors of the US flag, captioning it ‘SOON’ US President Donald Trump on Sunday doubled down on his claim that Greenland should become part of the US, despite calls by the Danish prime minister to stop “threatening” the territory. Washington’s military intervention in Venezuela has reignited fears for Greenland, which Trump has repeatedly said he wants to annex, given its strategic location in the arctic. While aboard Air Force One en route to Washington, Trump reiterated the goal. “We need Greenland from the standpoint of national security, and Denmark is not going to be able to do it,” he said in response to a reporter’s question. “We’ll worry about Greenland in
PERILOUS JOURNEY: Over just a matter of days last month, about 1,600 Afghans who were at risk of perishing due to the cold weather were rescued in the mountains Habibullah set off from his home in western Afghanistan determined to find work in Iran, only for the 15-year-old to freeze to death while walking across the mountainous frontier. “He was forced to go, to bring food for the family,” his mother, Mah Jan, said at her mud home in Ghunjan village. “We have no food to eat, we have no clothes to wear. The house in which I live has no electricity, no water. I have no proper window, nothing to burn for heating,” she added, clutching a photograph of her son. Habibullah was one of at least 18 migrants who died
RSS