Kim Jong Un Glorifies North Korean Lives Lost in Ukraine War at Opening of Luxury Apartment Complexes at Pyongyang

Luxury urban life has arrived in the heart of the North Korean capital of Pyongyang in the form of high-rise apartment complexes packed with 50,000 flats. North Korea’s propaganda machine is making the most of a show intended in part to mollify the grief and anger of families who lost loved ones in Russia’s war for Ukraine.North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong Un, his beloved daughter Ju-ae and his wife Ri Sol-ju at his side, were shown on the North’s state TV touring a spacious apartment after cutting the tape at the entrance of one of the buildings to the cheers of a crowd massed for the occasion. Another shot showed the North’s first family visiting a pet store with puppies on display behind plate glass windows.Balloons floated above and patriotic music played as an official credited Mr. Kim’s “noble intention and steadfast will” for the success of the project. It was the second day on which Mr. Kim and his family were shown celebrating the new apartments in the run-up to a congress of the ruling Worker’s Party set for later this month. The elite of the capital, including ranking party, military and government officials, were sure to get most of the flats, but Mr. Kim, on the first day of the dedication, wanted it known the families of those killed in the war come first. Pyongyang’s Korean Central News Agency quoted him as saying, “the strong will of all the people to convey forever the shining star-like feats of the heroes who unhesitatingly sacrificed their lives for the immortal honor and eternal prosperity of their great motherland during the overseas military operations.”The appeal to emotions was Mr. Kim’s response to the feelings generated by the deaths of North Korean soldiers killed and wounded in Russia’s war. One third of the 12,000 North Korean soldiers sent to join the fight in 2024 are never coming home, according to South Korea’s National Intelligence Service, and several thousand more have gone there since the initial deployment.Mr. Kim, at the dedication, did not say specifically where or how the soldiers had died, but there was no doubt what he was talking about.He “personally initiated the construction of a new street for their bereaved families and named it to glorify the precious life of fine sons of the country generation after generation,” said KCNA. He had “energetically guided the whole course of its construction so that every element of buildings shows the warm sincerity of our Party and state for the families that the brave fighters left behind.”The street was “overflowing with emotion and joy of the bereaved families who would move into new flats amid the blessing of military and civilian builders,” as KCNA described it, while images of Mr. Kim’s daughter gave the impression that her father also wanted to put her on public display more conspicuously.North Korean state TV featured “multiple scenes” of Ju-ae “interacting with residents,” said South Korea’s biggest-selling newspaper, Chosun Ilbo. Photos showed her, “alongside her father, hugging newly settled residents and offering congratulations. “ The same scenes, ” the paper noted, “were prominently featured in the Rodong Sinmun,” the North’s party newspaper.It was “unusual” for Ju-ae “to be shown naturally interacting with ordinary residents rather than high-ranking officials,” said Chosun Ilno. “Some interpret this as an attempt to imprint her as a potential successor” ahead of the party congress in keeping with an intelligence report that she had “entered the stage of being designated as a successor.”Chosun Ilbo quoted a professor at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul, Yang Joo-min, as saying Mr. Kim wanted “to strengthen her image as a successor by symbolically demonstrating the father’s revolutionary ideology of ‘putting the people first.’”

Kim Jong Un Glorifies North Korean Lives Lost in Ukraine War at Opening of Luxury Apartment Complexes at Pyongyang

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