Seoul: North Korea held a large-scale performance celebrating New Year in Pyongyang, with leader Kim Jong-un in attendance, state media reported Wednesday.
The art performance was given with “splendour” on Tuesday night at the May Day Stadium to usher “in the hopeful new year 2025, which will be a watershed for steady success and progress,” the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said.
Figure skaters and schoolchildren danced on the ice to the tune of “Dear Father,” a song praising Kim, to kick off the performance, which was attended by the leader, top government and party cadres and military commanders, according to the KCNA.
When Kim appeared in the auditorium, the audience broke into “stormy cheers,” paying “the highest glory and tribute,” while the leader extended his “greeting of best wishes” to all people across the country, the report said.
“When the performance ended, loud cheers of ‘Hurrah!’ for Kim Jong-un rocked the venue and fireworks were let off to gorgeously decorate the nocturnal sky,” the KCNA noted.
Photos of the performance, released by North Korea, showed Kim’s daughter, believed to be named Ju-ae, and Premier Pak Thae-song sitting next to Kim. However, Kim’s wife was not seen, nor was she listed among those in attendance.
In separate dispatches, the KCNA reported that students in Pyongyang gathered at Kim Il Sung Square on Tuesday night to hoist the national flag and launch fireworks in celebration of New Year, indicating that North Korea ushered in the New Year with events similar to those in the past.
A video of the New Year performance, aired by Korean Central Television, showed Kim Yo-jong — the North Korean leader’s sister who serves as vice department director of the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea — walking outside the event venue, holding the hand of a boy, with a girl next to her, Yonhap news agency reported.
In April 2015, South Korea’s spy agency reported that Kim was presumed to be giving birth the following month. Later in 2018, a government source said Kim was pregnant during her visit to South Korea in February of that year for the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics.
However, no official information has confirmed her marital status, pregnancies or childbirths. An official at South Korea’s unification ministry noted that it is difficult to draw presumptions based on the video.
(IANS)
