On New Year’s Eve in South Korea, surging crowds gather
around Boshingak Bell Pavilion in the Jongo District of Seoul for the
“Watch-Night Bell” ceremony. Over 100,000 people brave the cold, coming into
Seoul from all across the country to hear the bell ring at the stroke of
midnight heading into the first day of the new year.
Not unlike its neighbors to the south, North Korea employs a
similar annual tradition to greet the new year. In the Taedongmun area of the
capital, the Pyongyang Bell draws scores of residents and lovers eager to see
what the new year holds in store for them.
Residents in provincial regions of North Korea watch the
ceremony on television–said to experience high rates of accessibility throughout New Year’s due to an
increase in power provisions allocated by the state in honor of the special occasion.
While the bell rings 33 times in South Korea, in line with
origins steeped in Buddhist tradition, North Korea rings the bell only 12
times to signal the advent of a new year, though the number’s
significance–if any–remains a source of speculation.
The “Pyongyang Bell,” which weighs over 13.5 tons, also goes
by the name “Emile Bell,” a name derived from a tragic
legend in which a mother sacrifices her child to complete the Divine Bell of King Seongdeok. According to the legend, after the bell was cast, its wide-reaching reverberations sounded like the word “Emile,” the Silla term for “Mother!”
Prior to the bell-ringing event, children from the
Mangyongdae Children’s Palace give an elaborate performance, typically attended
by Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il since becoming an annual tradition in 1958.
Kim Eun Kyung [alias], a North Korean defector who came to
South Korea in early 2014, spoke the Daily NK about these performances,
stating, “I participated in this concert when I was in North Korea and the
preparations start as early as six months ahead of the event. The rehearsals are
rigorous and can run so late into the night that many of the students suffer
from frequent nosebleeds.”
She elaborated about how she found none of this particularly unsettling at the time. “I didn’t give a second thought to how hard it was at the time,” she
said. “ I only thought about what an honor it was for me to perform as part of
something that Kim Il Song and Kim Jong Il would see.”
In his lifetime, Kim Il Sung was known to greatly enjoy
watching children’s song and dance performances–especially the New Year’s
event, where the leader would receive innumerable New Year’s bows from youths cheering, “Long Live Kim Il Sung!” He was said to have never missed
the event, while his son’s attendance was rather sporadic, and his grandson’s decidedly more so.
