Watch: North Korea pulls out all the stops to celebrate Kim Jong-un in song
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North Koreans sing overzealously about their love for “friendly father” Kim Jong-un in a new music video premiered at a glitzy ceremony in Pyongyang.
The song debuted during a nighttime ceremony to inaugurate a new housing estate featuring 10,000 homes.
The event was also marked by a gaudy show of fireworks, the release of balloons in the colour of the national flag and a military flypast which left a glittering red trail in the sky.
Kim, wearing a shiny black leather jacket, arrived with his bodyguards in an armoured limousine said to have been gifted by Vladimir Putin, the Russian president.
Members of his security team flanked the North Korean dictator while carrying bulletproof briefcases.
He stepped onto a wide red carpet, waving to cheering crowds who could be seen leaping with excitement. Some were seemingly overcome with emotion.
Analysts believe the grand display is part of a growing effort to build a cult of personality around Kim, who has ruled the reclusive regime with an iron fist for the past 12 years.
The costly ceremony was broadcast on state-run Korean Central Television on Wednesday. The country’s most celebrated singers performed on a rooftop stage opposite Kim and his entourage.
The musicians debuted the song “Friendly Father”, an upbeat tune which repeatedly praises Kim for the “brighter future” he offers North Koreans, reported Seoul-based news site NK News.
The song’s music video shows Kim enjoying the adoration of his troops and the excited, flag-waving public – many of whom were presumed to be residents of the newly built apartments.
The housing block, which was reportedly finished in 14 months, completes part of Kim’s promise in early 2021 to deploy the military to build 50,000 new apartments in the capital within five years.
Slick modern homes are used to reward Pyongyang’s elites and those who take up professions favoured by the regime, such as teachers and scientists.
However, outside the boundary of the new neighbourhoods, the city’s roads are crumbling into potholes and the reality of the isolated country’s economic crisis is more evident.
Beyond the outskirts of Pyongyang, the rest of the country lives in dire poverty, deprived of adequate food and basic healthcare, as well as their rights and freedoms.
The latest propaganda video instead offers the perception of a utopia created by Kim, who opened the housing estate ceremony by cutting a giant red ribbon.
The song follows the unveiling of paintings and murals in Kim’s honour, which experts say is part of a deliberate acceleration of a cult of personality that will eventually match his father and grandfather.
Statues of Kim Jong-il and Kim Il-sung are displayed across the nation.
Last year, a mosaic mural depicting Kim wearing a red scarf and surrounded by smiling students was erected at an elite school in Pyongyang, reported Yonhap.
It followed the first-ever mosaic representation of the youngest leader of the Kim dynasty, which showed him digging a shovel of earth at a ceremony to mark the start of the construction of a greenhouse farm in Hamju county.
Kim may be forging a distinct ideological path for his own era, according to Hong Min, a senior researcher at the Korea Institute for National Unification.
“He wants his people to focus on his achievements rather than his ancestors’ feats,” he recently told the South China Morning Post.
