Saturday marks the holiest day in the North Korean Kim cult, the “Day of the Sun,” which honors the country’s founder Kim Il-sung, and typically includes displays of the country’s military strength.
North Korea’s Day of the Sun holiday commemorates the 111th birthday of the Communist tyranny’s founder Kim Il-sung, the grandfather of Kim Jong-un. Kim Jong-un celebrated ten years of “invincible leadership” last April.
In 2020, Kim Jong-un notably missed the Day of the Sun celebration, leading many to suspect that he may have fallen ill with a Wuhan coronavirus infection.
To prepare for this year’s holiday, the country opened a national industrial art exhibition on April 6. The exhibition featured more than 540 designs and product models created by industrial artists across the country. Kim Jong-un personally guided 190 of those art designs, according to outlets.
Tens of thousands of North Koreans typically take to the streets of the capital to commemorate the holiday. Previous years’ celebrations of the holiday have featured large-scale military parades in an apparent show of strength.
Breitbart News reported:
Pyongyang has typically used the occasion to debut new missiles and other weaponry intended to intimidate the rest of the world, particularly South Korea and America, which it technically remains at war against since hostilities ended in the Korean War in 1953. In the past two years, however, North Korean festivities have been largely muted in light of the ongoing Chinese coronavirus pandemic. North Korea officially claims to have not documented a single case of Chinese coronavirus within its borders, a claim few international observers believe.
It is unknown whether this year’s celebration will see a return to such military displays. However, Kim Jong-un on Monday presided over a meeting of the Central Military Commission to reportedly discuss “frontline attack operation plans” and other offensive measures.
Kim Jong-un’s Monday military meeting featured an enlarged image of a map of South Korea as part of the presentation.
On Thursday, North Korea fired what South Korean and Japanese officials believe was a ballistic missile, resulting in Japan sending an evacuation and shelter alert to the entire northern island of Hokkaido. The missile flew into the Sea of Japan/East Sea and ultimately did not threaten Japanese territory, but authorities insisted the warning was necessary as the missile temporarily disappeared from radar before landing in the water. Some experts speculate that launching the missile was in anticipation of the Day of the Sun.
The North Korean state newspaper, Rodong Sinmun, confirmed the missile launch on Friday, identifying it as a new model of intercontinental ballistic missile, the “Hwasong-18.”
“The launching site, which was to witness once again an important event of great significance in the history of the development of the strategic force of the DPRK [North Korea] under the direct guidance of Kim Jong Un,” Rodong Sinmun narrated, “was seething with the burning will of all the defence scientists and workers in the field of munitions industry to inform the whole world of the emergence of another powerful nuclear attack means of the DPRK and demonstrate the reliable nuclear war deterrence of the state.”
In remarks following the launch, Kim reportedly promised to make the enemies of “socialist construction” – primarily South Korea and the United States – experience a “security crisis … until they abandon their senseless thinking.”
Jordan Dixon-Hamilton is a reporter for Breitbart News. Write to him at jdixonhamilton@breitbart.com or follow him on Twitter.
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