The North Korean authorities have designated January 8th and 9th as public holidays, allowing workers two days of rest to commemorate Kim Jong Eun\u2019s birthday. However, they did not allow any overt references to the birthday of the new leader in the media.<\/p>\n
According to reports from a source within North Korea, the authorities handed down the same orders for border security staff to be on alert that are ordinarily used on the birthdays of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il. Also, in what was the only obvious media concession to the event, Chosun Central TV ran a special documentary commemorating Kim Jong Eun.<\/p>\n
Conversely, Chosun Central News Agency, Rodong Shinmun and other domestic media outlets all studiously avoided mentioning the special day. This obviously had the opposite effect; given the prominence of news about the new leader in Rodong Shinmun since the end of the mourning period for Kim Jong Il, the absolute absence of any mention of him in the January 8th edition made his birthday all the more noticeable.<\/p>\n
The day was originally designated as a public holiday last year, and as such the authorities also allowed the public a day off at that time. However, then there were no special rations to mark the event, and that trend has reportedly continued this year. This is not surprising given the time it would have required to prepare any such handouts compared to the time that has passed since Kim Jong Il’s death.<\/p>\n
Indeed, if anything, the date this year has been celebrated less than last year. In 2011, some city and provincial Party cadres held special events to commemorate the date; however, this year the entire day has been publicly skipped over without fuss.<\/p>\n
There were, however, movements out of the Kaeseong Industrial Complex from North Korean officials to indicate that it was not an ordinary Sunday. A source from the South Korean Ministry of Unification said that the North requested on the 6th that no additional work be taken on for the day, and the ministry confirmed that as far as possible people did not take on any extra work for the day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The North Korean authorities have designated January 8th and 9th as public holidays, allowing workers two days of rest to commemorate Kim Jong Eun\u2019s birthday. However, they did not allow any overt references to the birthday of the new leader in the media. According to reports from a source within North Korea, the authorities handed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":151,"featured_media":17950,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wikipediapreview_detectlinks":true,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17948","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\n