Leader Kim Jong-un praised the “physically weak” but “strong-willed” women of his country, state media reported, calling them a “solid buttress of the revolution”.
In a speech in Pyongyang commemorating International Women’s Day on Sunday, Kim highlighted the hard work carried out by North Korean women.
“Our contemporary women... have become a solid buttress of the revolution,” Kim said, according to an English dispatch from the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).
“Though physically weak, they are obviously strong-willed, their plain faces assuming courage and the wrinkles on them denoting their strenuous exertion,” he added.
Kim’s wife Ri Sol-ju and daughter Ju-ae attended the weekend event.
Photos released by KCNA showed Ju-ae – long viewed by analysts as a possible successor in the secretive, nuclear-armed state – sitting next to her father and holding his hand.
Party officials and foreign diplomatic dignitaries also attended the event, which included performances following Kim’s speech, KCNA added.
Kim’s speech was received with “fervent cheers” from an audience “overwhelmed with great excitement”, the news agency said.
South Korea’s spy agency has said Pyongyang appears to have begun the process of designating Ju-ae as Kim’s successor.
Ju-ae’s latest official appearance follows her visit to a shooting range late last month. State media published a photo of her at the time peering through a rifle scope with her finger on the trigger, smoke rising from the barrel.
The Kim family has ruled North Korea with an iron grip for decades, and a cult of personality surrounding their “Paektu bloodline” dominates daily life in the isolated country. — AFP
