The wife of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has re-appeared after dropping out of the public eye for 50 days amid fevered rumors that she was either pregnant or had fallen out of favor.
North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said Ri Sol-ju joined her husband at a musical performance and a soccer match in Pyongyang on Monday.
“Marshall Kim Jong-un, the supreme leader of the party and the people, came to the spectators’ seats, accompanied by his wife Ri Sol-ju. At that moment, thunderous applause broke out,” KCNA said.
Photo: AFP
Kim took over the reins of power in North Korea following the death of his father, former North Korean leader Kim Jong-il. in December last year.
The fact that he even had a wife was only revealed in July when pictures emerged of a stylish young woman accompanying the new young leader at official events.
A terse statement from Pyongyang’s state television that month confirmed her identity and the fact that the couple were married.
Then in early September, she dropped from public view just as suddenly as she had appeared.
Her absence triggered speculation that she might be pregnant, while some suggested she was doing penance for failing to wear the lapel pin — bearing the image of one or both of the country’s late leaders — that all adult North Koreans are required to wear.
A photo of the couple at Monday’s musical performance showed Ri, wearing a long coat, applauding as Kim Jong-un saluted the cheering crowd.
South Korea’s Yonhap news agency stoked the pregnancy rumors by observing that her mid-section appeared swollen. It was not clear if she was wearing a badge under the coat.
The announcement of Kim Jong-un’s marriage and Ri’s media profile mark a departure for North Korea, whose intensely secretive regime has previously kept the private lives of its rulers under wraps.
According to intelligence reports cited by the South Korean media, the couple were married in 2009 and already have one child.
Ri was described as coming from an ordinary family, with her father an academic and her mother a doctor. She visited South Korea in 2005 as a cheerleader for her country’s squad in the Asian Athletics Championships.
NASA on Monday successfully flew its mini helicopter Ingenuity on Mars, the first powered flight on another planet and a feat the agency said was “our Wright brothers moment.” The 1.8kg rotorcraft lifted off at 7:34am GMT, rose to 3m, swiveled its tissue-box-sized body, swayed in a gentle Martian breeze and then touched down after 39.1 seconds. Data and images from the flight were transmitted 278 million kilometers to Earth, where they were received by NASA’s array of ground antennas and processed almost three-and-a-half hours later. Engineers in orange polo shirts were glued to their screens at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California,
Furthering the growing interest in unidentified flying objects (UFOs), or what the US government refers to as unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), the US Department of Defense on Thursday confirmed that photos and videos of UFOs leaked in the past few months were legitimate and taken by US Navy personnel. Pentagon spokesperson Sue Gough confirmed to CNN that images and footage of a blinking triangular object in the sky, along with other aerial phenomena that were categorized as a “sphere,” “acorn” and “metallic blimp,” were taken by navy personnel in 2019. Gough told CNN that the department would not comment further on the
DRAWING DISMAY: Giving a forum to the coup leaders at the 10-country bloc’s talks in Jakarta this weekend would legitimize their rule, democracy advocates said Burmese Army Senior General Min Aung Hlaing is to join a special ASEAN summit on the weekend in his first official trip since masterminding a coup which deposed Burmese State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi, the Thai Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Saturday. The Feb. 1 coup triggered a massive uprising in Myanmar, bringing hundreds of thousands of protesters to the streets to demand a return to democracy, while civil servants have boycotted work in a bid to shutter the junta’s administration. The Burmese military junta has deployed lethal force to quell the anti-coup movement, killing more than 720 people and
AMID NEGOTIATIONS: Tehran for the first time confirmed that there was an explosion at its main nuclear facility on April 11, but denied that it was caused by a cyberattack Iran on Saturday named a suspect in the April 11 attack on its Natanz nuclear facility that damaged centrifuges, saying that he had fled the country “hours before” the sabotage happened. While the extent of the damage from the sabotage remains unclear, it comes as Iran tries to negotiate with world powers over allowing the US to re-enter its tattered nuclear deal and lift the economic sanctions it faces. Already, Iran has begun enriching uranium up to 60 percent purity in response — three times higher than ever before — although in small quantities. The sabotage and Iran’s response have further inflamed