The lighting on a bronze statue of Kim Il Sung in Wonsan went out for approximately five hours on July 7 – a day before the anniversary of the North Korean leader’s death, Daily NK has learned.
After the lights suddenly went out, officials from the Ministry of State Security (MSS) and the local “Statue Management Office” received an emergency call and rushed to the scene, a source in Gangwon Province told Daily NK on July 16.
Guards standing watch over the statue noticed the lights suddenly turn off at around midnight on July 7, but waited for 30 minutes because they did not believe anyone would be bold enough to deliberately cut the power. When the lights failed to come back on, the guards felt that something was amiss and reported the incident to the MSS and the local Status Management Office.
At around 2 AM, officials in charge of historical sites in Wonsan gathered alongside other officials from a slew of relevant organizations to determine the cause of the power failure. They failed to do so and eventually decided to connect the lights to electricity from another location, bringing them back online by around 5 AM, according to the source.
After daybreak, the officials once again inspected electrical facilities near the statue, ultimately concluding that the wiring had short circuited. The officials agreed that the incident should be kept as quiet as possible, since an “error” made in regards to a statue of the Supreme Leader (Kim Il Sung) would be treated as “political in nature.”
While no one except the local officials involved knew about the incident, rumors about it spread throughout Wonsan in less than a day, the source said.
Some locals speculated that a “reactionary” group had cut the main power line where the circuit began. Others blamed staff at the Statue Management Department for failing to properly maintain the facilities, noting that the lighting had flickered from time to time after it had rained in the past.
“The case is not closed yet, so the MSS and local police department are working together to conduct a quiet investigation into the incident,” the source told Daily NK. “If this had taken place on July 8 – the actual anniversary of Kim Il Sung’s death – it would have been a much bigger incident and those responsible would have been fired or stripped of their titles.”
Please direct any comments or questions about this article to dailynkenglish@uni-media.net.
