N.Korea fetes birthday of late Kim

N.Korea fetes birthday of late Kim

Jack Kim, Reuters/Seoul

Excitement and joy reigned in North Korea, official media
reported, as the impoverished, secretive state celebrated the
93rd anniversary of the birth of Kim Il-sung, its founder and
eternal president.

Pyongyang was pulling out all the festive stops for Kim's
birthday, which it calls "the Day of the Sun".

Former Indonesian president Megawati Soekarnoputri was in the
capital to attend the opening of the annual Kimilsungia festival,
celebrating the flower named after the late "Great Leader".

Floral tributes were placed beneath Kim's statues across the
country, North Korean media said.

Around the world, meanwhile, admirers from Kyrgyzstan to
Mongolia and from Congo to Peru were reported to have met to
praise the former guerrilla leader's exploits.

Kim died suddenly in 1994 at the age of 82, one month after
meeting former U.S. president Jimmy Carter, who had gone to
Pyongyang to help broker a deal to end the crisis over North
Korea's nuclear weapons ambitions.

Born in Pyongyang in 1912, Kim fought in the mountains of
Manchuria against colonial Japan. After the Japanese defeat at
the end of World War Two, the Soviet Union installed him to rule
the northern half of the Korean peninsula.

His rule went unchallenged until his death, when his son Kim
Jong-il inherited power as chairman of the powerful National
Defense Commission. The junior Kim never took the title of
president, in deference to his father.

A television documentary broadcast in North Korea on Friday
showed previously unreleased footage of Kim Il-sung giving an
impromptu rendition of a song that tells of yearning for one's
mother.

"As I was leaving home/Mother stood weeping at the gate/Have a
safe trip, she said/Her voice rings in my ears," Kim sings,
swinging his fist in time to the music as solemn party officials
look on.

The narrator in the documentary, showing Kim in his later
years and carried on South Korea's Yonhap news agency Website,
said the song was a Kim favorite from his days as an anti-
Japanese guerrilla chief.

While North Koreans in their tens of thousands visited
Pyongyang landmarks on Friday to pay respects to the dead leader,
several million others were believed to be starving in different
parts of the country, human rights activists said.

International aid agency Caritas issued an urgent appeal this
week for U$$2.5 million in donations to provide food, medical
supplies and help for farms in the North.

North Korea did not completely sidestep the problem it has in
feeding its people.

It set an October deadline -- when the authorities will
celebrate the 60th anniversary of the ruling Workers' Party --
"to bring new exaltation to all parts of the socialist economy,
beginning in the agricultural front" so that the October
festivities will take place "in joyous atmosphere".

"It was President Kim Il-sung's life-long dream to build the
world's strongest nation," Seoul's Yonhap news agency quoted the
Workers' Party daily Rodong Sinmun as saying in an editorial.