New pictures of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un riding a white horse through a winter landscape to the summit of Mount Paektu, a sacred peak for North Koreans, have fueled speculation that the young leader could be set to make a major policy announcement.
The images released by the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) were accompanied by a gushing text that noted the “noble glitters” in Kim’s eyes, and labeled his snowy, horseback ride “a great event of weighty importance” for the nation.
Accompanying officials were left convinced that “there will be a great operation to strike the world with wonder again and make a step forward in the Korean revolution,” the agency said.
Photo: EPA-EFE
The hike might signal a new policy direction for the North, analysts said.
“In the past, Kim has climbed Mount Paektu ahead of major political decisions,” said Shin Beom-chul, an analyst at the Asan Institute of Policy Studies in Seoul.
Kim hiked to the peak in December 2017 before launching diplomatic overtures that led to his first summit with US President Donald Trump, but negotiations have been gridlocked since their second summit collapsed in February, and the North has been raising tensions through a series of missile tests.
The sight of North Korean leaders riding white horses across snow-capped peaks — and in particular Mount Paektu — were a dominant theme of photographs, posters and portraits of Kim’s father, Kim Jong-il and grandfather, Kim Il-sung.
According to the images present an imperial motif of a leader protecting the cultural and ideological purity of the nation from corrupt, outside forces, said B.R. Myers, a professor at Dongseo University in Busan, South Korea, who specializes in North Korean propaganda,
Kim Jong-un also visited the site of a giant construction project in nearby Samjiyon County and blamed US-led international sanctions for his country’s hardships, KCNA reported.
“The situation of the country is difficult owing to the ceaseless sanctions and pressure by the hostile forces and there are many hardships and trials facing us,” Kim Jong-un was quoted as saying.
North Korea is under multiple sets of UN sanctions for its nuclear and missile programs.
Pyongyang and Washington this month restarted working-level talks in Sweden, only for it to quickly break down, with the North blaming the US for not giving up its “old attitude.”
Airlines in Australia, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia and Singapore yesterday canceled flights to and from the Indonesian island of Bali, after a nearby volcano catapulted an ash tower into the sky. Australia’s Jetstar, Qantas and Virgin Australia all grounded flights after Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki on Flores island spewed a 9km tower a day earlier. Malaysia Airlines, AirAsia, India’s IndiGo and Singapore’s Scoot also listed flights as canceled. “Volcanic ash poses a significant threat to safe operations of the aircraft in the vicinity of volcanic clouds,” AirAsia said as it announced several cancelations. Multiple eruptions from the 1,703m twin-peaked volcano in
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) launched a week-long diplomatic blitz of South America on Thursday by inaugurating a massive deep-water port in Peru, a US$1.3 billion investment by Beijing as it seeks to expand trade and influence on the continent. With China’s demand for agricultural goods and metals from Latin America growing, Xi will participate in the APEC summit in Lima then head to the Group of 20 summit in Rio de Janeiro next week, where he will also make a state visit to Brazil. Xi and Peruvian President Dina Boluarte participated on Thursday by video link in the opening
‘HARD-HEADED’: Some people did not evacuate to protect their property or because they were skeptical of the warnings, a disaster agency official said Typhoon Man-yi yesterday slammed into the Philippines’ most populous island, with the national weather service warning of flooding, landslides and huge waves as the storm sweeps across the archipelago nation. Man-yi was still packing maximum sustained winds of 185kph after making its first landfall late on Saturday on lightly populated Catanduanes island. More than 1.2 million people fled their homes ahead of Man-yi as the weather forecaster warned of a “life-threatening” effect from the powerful storm, which follows an unusual streak of violent weather. Man-yi uprooted trees, brought down power lines and smashed flimsy houses to pieces after hitting Catanduanes in the typhoon-prone
HOPEFUL FOR PEACE: Zelenskiy said that the war would ‘end sooner’ with Trump and that Ukraine must do all it can to ensure the fighting ends next year Russia’s state-owned gas company Gazprom early yesterday suspended gas deliveries via Ukraine, Vienna-based utility OMV said, in a development that signals a fast-approaching end of Moscow’s last gas flows to Europe. Russia’s oldest gas-export route to Europe, a pipeline dating back to Soviet days via Ukraine, is set to shut at the end of this year. Ukraine has said it would not extend the transit agreement with Russian state-owned Gazprom to deprive Russia of profits that Kyiv says help to finance the war against it. Moscow’s suspension of gas for Austria, the main receiver of gas via Ukraine, means Russia now only
RSS