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Flying the flag: North Korea puts on daily displays
PYONGYANG, March 9, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – Every workday morning, detachments of
North Korean women armed with red flags take up their positions in strategic
locations around Pyongyang.
To the sound of patriotic songs extolling the Democratic People’s Republic
of Korea, as the North is officially known, and lauding its leader Kim Jong
Un, they wave their banners and beat red drums for up to an hour.
They are deployed at major sites and key transport hubs such as the
Ryugyong hotel and the city’s main train station, each group in a different
uniform but their equipment identical.
Their displays of sweeping, flowing gestures — accompanied by disciplined
looks — are intended to motivate the North’s workers to greater efforts in
their toils.
“We do this propaganda with the desire to give happiness to the Marshal,”
said Kim Chun Hui, referring to the leader.
Kim spoke to AFP after her performance Saturday outside the Ryugyong
hotel, the unfinished pyramid that towers over Pyongyang but has yet to open
for business — although its facades are now illuminated at night, topped
with a North Korean flag.
“We encourage the citizens to achieve greater successes in their work,”
added the 47-year-old, who has two sons.
“So we are not tired. We regard this as our great pride and we think this
is what we have to do.”
Ordinary North Korean citizens always express wholehearted support for the
authorities when speaking to foreign media.
The shows have their origins in two production drives the North declared
in 2016, the “70-day battle” and “200-day battle” — Pyongyang often uses
military language when setting goals for its economy, hit by sanctions
imposed over its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programmes.
Those “battles” are long over but the flag-waving — whose formal name is
the “Agitation Activity of the Members of the Socialist Women’s Union in Rush
Hour” — continues six days a week, the routines unchanged.
The Socialist Women’s Union is an official body through which the highly
regimented North organises the lives of its housewives, and the flag-waving
is one of its activities.
All non-working women are members, largely in their 30s to 50s — North
Korean women in their 20s are assigned jobs, but many leave formal employment
once they marry and have children.
“We regard the Supreme Leader as our father,” said Song Yang Ran, 57, the
SWU head for Pothonggang district in the centre of the capital.
“We always do this thinking of the Supreme Leader,” she added.
“We will do it forever.”
BSS/AFP/MSY/1457 hrs