North Korean leader Kim Jong-un yesterday paid his respects to Vietnamese revolutionary leader Ho Chi Minh, whose embalmed body is on permanent display, just like Kim’s own father and grandfather in North Korea.
Kim’s visit to the mausoleum in Hanoi was part of a two-day official visit to Vietnam that began on Friday. Earlier in the week, he met US President Donald Trump in Hanoi for their second summit, which finished without an agreement.
Ho’s granite-and-marble mausoleum, built with help from the then-Soviet Union, is one of Hanoi’s most famous places.
Streams of Vietnamese wait in long lines to pay homage to the former leader, who died in 1969 at the age of 79. Known as Uncle Ho, he fought French and Japanese occupiers and later the US.
The site of the mausoleum, Ba Dinh Square, is where Ho proclaimed a Declaration of Independence in 1945.
Ho, who had lived in a modest stilt house instead of the nearby Presidential Palace, left instructions for a simple funeral followed by cremation, but Vietnamese Communist Party leaders deleted those portions of his testament and preserved him as a unifying figure for future generations.
His body was embalmed with the help of Moscow experts, who also preserved the body of Vladimir Lenin, the founder of the Soviet Union.
The bodies of Kim’s father, Kim Jong-il, and grandfather Kim Il-sung are displayed at Pyongyang’s Kumsusan Palace of the Sun.
Days before his visit to Hanoi, Kim Jong-un visited the memorial hall with his top lieutenants to mark his late father’s birthday.
Kim Jong-un’s visit to Vietnam is the first by a North Korean leader since Kim Il-sung went there in 1958 and 1964, both for meetings with Ho. Ho traveled to Pyongyang and met Kim Il-sung in 1957.
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