Wearing a pink Korean dress and flashing a wide smile, television presenter Ri Chun-hee delivered the news of Pyongyang’s sixth nuclear test with her usual gusto.
Using her trademark bombastic delivery, Ri announced on state television on Sunday the hydrogen bomb test was “a perfect success” and a key step in “completing the state nuclear force.”
The 74-year-old grandmother is considered a national hero who first took to the airwaves in 1971, leaving a career in acting for the broadcaster Korean Central Television (KCTV)
Photo: AFP
Ri’s dramatic flare set her apart from other announcers — whether she was angrily denouncing the West or boasting of the regime’s achievements and the strength of its leaders.
“She’s the perfect person to voice North Korea’s hardline stance,” said Ahn Chan-il, a high-ranking North Korean defector who now lives in South Korea. “There is no one else who has that power in her voice as she does. It’s just right for talking about nuclear weapons or missiles.”
Ri, who usually wears a traditional Korean dress known as a hanbok, has also shown a softer side. She famously wept on air when announcing North Korea’s founder Kim Il-sung’s death in 1994.
When his son Kim Jong-il died in 2011, it was Ri — clad in black funeral clothes and her voice trembling — who delivered the news to North Koreans.
Despite officially retiring in 2012, Ri has been brought back for major announcements.
Sunday’s broadcast underscored her longevity at a time when current leader Kim Jong-un has purged some party and military officials from his father’s era.
Outside North Korea, the “pink lady” is a familiar face of the regime during the latest tensions over Pyongyang’s weapons programs.
“I know that if something happens, she will talk,” Tokyo resident Sakota Masashi said.
Matt Walker, a credit manager in Sydney, said Ri was “very expressive and excited” on the news item he watched this week.
“I don’t know how you can get excited about bombs going off. It just seems very odd,” he said.
In a rare 2012 interview with state-run China Central Television, Ri said she wanted to help train the next generation of North Korean broadcasters, who she said were younger and better suited for today’s television audience.
She said she saved her gentler side for the North Korean public.
“When we read to people in the DPRK [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea], you shouldn’t shout but speak gently to viewers,” Ri said.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of
IN PURSUIT: Israel’s defense minister said the revenge attacks by Israeli settlers would make it difficult for security forces to find those responsible for the 14-year-old’s death Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday condemned the “heinous murder” of an Israeli teenager in the occupied West Bank as attacks on Palestinian villages intensified following news of his death. After Benjamin Achimeir, 14, was reported missing near Ramallah on Friday, hundreds of Jewish settlers backed by Israeli forces raided nearby Palestinian villages, torching vehicles and homes, leaving at least one villager dead and dozens wounded. The attacks escalated in several villages on Saturday after Achimeir’s body was found near the Malachi Hashalom outpost. Agence France-Presse correspondents saw smoke rising from burned houses and fields. Mayor Amin Abu Alyah, of the