North Korea Starts Year with Celebration of Cuban Revolution

North Korea’s state media announced that Pyongyang sent a celebratory floral basket to the Cuban embassy on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the Revolution. Dictator Kim Jong-un also sent a friendly greeting to dictator Raúl Castro, a sign North Korea expects Cuba to play a major role in its diplomacy in 2019.

Cuba and North Korea have been close allies for decades due to their adherence to strict communist ideology and mutual records of gross human rights violations. Cuba’s President Miguel Díaz-Canel, who answers to Castro, visited Pyongyang in November to cement ties, attending a lavish dinner and extended performance art show.

Kim not only celebrated the new year with his dedication to Cuba, but applauded the repressive nation on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the Cuban Revolution.

“Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un sent a floral basket to the Cuban embassy here on the 60th anniversary of victory of the Cuban revolution,” according to the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA). The agency also reported that Kim sent a “message of greeting” to Castro and Díaz-Canel expressing his regime’s willingness to remain loyal to Cuba and continue to support the island nation in its goals.

“The message said that the Cuban people have always achieved only victories and successes in the socialist revolution and construction under the correct leadership of Fidel Castro Ruz, Raul Castro Ruz and Miguel Mario Diaz-Canel Bermudez for six decades since the victory in the Cuban revolution,” KCNA reported, “adding the DPRK people are rejoiced at this as their own.”

Kim Jong-un also reportedly stated that he hoped to see the continued “comradely relations of friendship and cooperation between the two parties and the two countries with a long history and traditions would expand and develop as required by the new era.”

The message of solidarity comes at a difficult time for the Cuban regime, which is facing internal unrest after failing to secure the necessary supply of wheat grain to feed the population. As a result, Cubans spent hours on lines throughout the country demanding bread, noting that their ration cards entitled them to government bread but receiving word that the bakeries had no flour to bake the bread with. In such a climate, Díaz-Canel delivered a subdued end-of-year speech warning of more economic hardships in the future.

The next day, on Tuesday, Castro issued his address observing the anniversary of the Revolution, blaming the United States for the failures of the communist system. According to Castro, the United States “has spent 12 administrations unceasingly putting effort into forcing regime change in Cuba using one method or another, with more or less aggression.”

Cuban state officials have worked hard to maintain close relations with North Korea, an illegal nuclear power. Díaz-Canel made Pyongyang one of his first stops outside of his country in November, meeting with Kim Jong-un and signing various agreements on trade, science, and diplomacy. Kim organized an extensive street parade, lavish dinners, and performances by North Korea’s dancers and singers in Díaz-Canel’s honor.

Díaz-Canel issued remarks in Pyongyang thanking his hosts and applauding Kim, considered by many human rights researchers and advocates as the world’s worst state violator of human rights, for “invariably advancing along the road chosen by themselves and making a rapid development,” according to North Korean state media.

Prior to Díaz-Canel’s visit, North Korea made sure to send its second-in-command, vice chairman of the Central Committee of the North’s Workers’ Party Choe Ryong-hae, to Havana before a visit to the United States for ongoing nuclear weapons discussions with the United States.

North Korea launched a new negotiation tactic at the beginning of 2018, requested diplomatic chats and visits to the United States and South Korea to discuss “denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.” These visits allowed senior North Korean officials to enjoy the luxuries of capitalist life abroad that the communist system forbids, engaging in high-end state dinners with fellow diplomats. Last month, North Korean officials clarified that they did not define this term as meaning an end to North Korea’s illegal nuclear weapons program, but an end to the presence of American soldiers on the peninsula, even though America has no nuclear assets placed in the region.

Kim Jong-un indicated that he hoped to schedule more dinners throughout 2019 in his New Year’s Day speech Tuesday.

“We should bring about a revolutionary upsurge on all fronts of socialist construction by regarding self-reliance as a treasured sword for prosperity, a spirit which has always been a banner of struggle and driving force for a leap forward in the whole course of the Korean revolution,” Kim said in his address. “Through the struggle of last year, which added a new page of proud victory to the annals of our revolution, we have been convinced once again of the validity of our own cause and the invincible strength of our state.”