Team News Riveting
Normally posed grinning at a missile launch or in command of lengthy official meetings, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un had a different look: emotional and apologetic.
At a weekend military parade where he showed off Pyongyang’s latest and largest intercontinental ballistic missiles, Kim’s voice trembled momentarily as he spoke of “tears of gratitude” for his people’s efforts.
He repeatedly and effusively thanked the citizens and military for their loyalty and for remaining healthy in the face of the global coronavirus epidemic, which he insisted had not caused a single case in North Korea.
That has come at a price: Kim closed his impoverished country’s borders in January to stop the virus, a move which analysts say has exacerbated the effects of international sanctions imposed over the North’s banned weapons programmes.
The camera cut away after Kim lauded volunteers who helped with disaster recovery efforts, returning to show him laying down a handkerchief and putting his glasses back on, as if he had been wiping his eyes.
At one point he went as far as apologising for failing to meet expectations: “Our people have placed trust, as high as sky and as deep as sea, on me, but I have failed to always live up to it satisfactorily,” he said.
“I am really sorry for that,” he went on, according to the transcript by the official KCNA news agency.
It was his second apology of recent weeks: according to Seoul’s presidential Blue House, the North’s ruling party told it in September that Kim was “very sorry” over the killing of a South Korean in Pyongyang’s waters.
