This just in from Korean Central News agency of DPRK:
Pyongyang, April 13 (KCNA) — Preparatory committees were inaugurated in many countries to commemorate the Day of the Sun, the birth anniversary of President Kim Il Sung. Since the Ugandan National Preparatory Committee for Commemorating April 15 and Celebrating February 16 was formed in Kampala on December 23 last year for the first time, preparatory committees have been organized in 40 odd countries under various names such as “preparatory committee for commemorating the birthday of Generalissimo Kim Il Sung who is the great leader of the Korean people, the Day of the Sun” and “preparatory committee for commemoration of the Day of the Sun and a ‘meeting praising the great persons of Mt. Paektu'”. Among those countries are Russia, Romania, Ecuador, Poland, Nepal, Mexico, Cambodia and South Africa.
High-ranking officials of governments, political parties and organizations and chiefs of friendship and solidarity groups were elected honorary chairmen and chairmen of the preparatory committees. Among them were Kong Sam Ol, deputy prime minister for Royal Palace of Cambodia, Miroslav Stepan, general secretary of the C.C., the Czechoslovak Communist Party, Rashed Khan Menon, chairman of the C.C., the Workers’ Party of Bangladesh, Christopher Coleman, spokesman (leader) of the C.C., the Revolutionary Communist Party of Britain (Marxist-Leninist), Muhammed Inuwa Rabaran, national organizational secretary of the People’s Democratic Party of Nigeria, Muhammad al Husseini al Akad, vice-minister of Agriculture of Egypt, the president of the Social Development Coordinating Centre of Thailand, Ramon Jimenez Lopez, president of the Mexican Committee for the Study of Kimilsungism, and P. Shiv Shankar, chairman of the All India Indo-Korean Friendship Association.
The preparatory committees decided to organize on a wide scale such colorful functions as national seminar, meeting, film show, photo exhibition, lecture and round-table talks and widely introduce the revolutionary life of Kim Il Sung, who performed undying feats for the human cause of independence through media so as to significantly commemorate the Day of the Sun.
It’s a world celebration! He may have been dead for a decade, but he’s still the life of the party. Look for a Day of the Sun celebration near you.
The KCNA website is quite fascinating. Though many national news services suffer from sharing a somewhat inaccurate worldview with their government, KCNA is a window into the mass-hallucination that is North Korean culture.
Yes, indeed.
What I find extraordinary is that virtually nothing about DPRK has changed since I went there a few times in 1978 and 1979.
(See HERE)
There can be no other country in the world where so little has changed in 27 years.
It’s a fascinating place. Turkmenistan (which I really need to get around to writing something sensible about) seems to be headed the same way too. Comical from the outside. I can’t imagine what it might be like to grow up in such a place though.
Nice site! I shall keep an eye on it.