04/15/2019 North Korea (International Christian Concern) – Today is “The Day of the Sun,” an annual public holiday in North Korea which marks the anniversary of the 1912 birth of Kim Il Sung, founder and Eternal President of North Korea.
Tens of thousands of North Koreans marched to pay tribute to their leaders on the biggest day of the year. They bowed as they paid their respects before the statues of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il at Mansu Hill in Pyongyang. Some got emotional as they stood in front of the giant statues.
Retired colonel Ra Man Ok, 84, wiped tears from her eyes as she bowed. “I want to pay tribute with my spirit to the great leaders because I am too old to repay their benevolence with my labor,” she told AFP, wearing the uniform in which she had marched in a military parade decades ago.
“My motto is that everybody can realize their hopes only by following the leadership of our party through all trials and difficulties,” she added.
Considered the North Korean equivalent of Christmas, North Koreans receive
gifts of cooking oil or other food and drink from their employers so they can further appreciate the three-generation dictatorial rule of the Kim family.
In order to maintain in power — and above all, ensure that the country is isolated from the outside world — the North Korean regime has propagated a personality cult with the message that the “fatherly leader” Kim Il Sung and his two successors, Kim Jong Il and now Kim Jong Un, have their best interests.
A large number of North Koreans fell into depression or died of shock in 1994 after they learned of the death of Kim Il Sung, a supreme leader believed to be immortal.
Raised in a Christian home, the anti-Japanese guerrilla Kim Il Sung adopted many Christian concepts and twisted them to create a state religion of personality cult. North Koreans shall only worship their leaders, not other gods. The Kim dynasty sees Christianity as the state’s enemy and needs to be eradicated to cleanse the race of this foreign religion. The country today continues to persecute Christians with imprisonment, torture, or even death.
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