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North Korean leader Kim Jong Un visits the Chinese People's Volunteer Army Martyrs' cemetery
- KCNA
- Jul 25, 2023 Updated Jul 26, 2023
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un visits the Chinese People's Volunteer Army Martyrs' cemetery in this photo released on July 26, 2023 by North Korea's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA). KCNA via REUTERS
Pyongyang on Thursday will commemorate the 70th anniversary of the signing of the July 27, 1953 Korean War armistice, which ended open hostilities and is marked as Victory Day in the North.
During Kim's visit to the cemetery, the North Korean and Chinese national anthems were "solemnly played", the Korean Central News Agency reported.
China is North Korea's longtime ally and economic benefactor, with Mao Zedong -- whose son Mao Anying was among those killed -- having once described their relations as "close as lips and teeth".
Then Kim "placed a flower before the grave of Mao Anying at the cemetery and paid a tribute to him", it added.
The report described the Chinese as those who "unsparingly dedicated their precious lives to the righteous war of the Korean people".
The US-led United Nations coalition had pushed North Korean forces under Kim's grandfather Kim Il Sung almost all the way back to the Chinese border before Mao -- whose Communist army had won the Chinese civil war only a year earlier -- intervened in October 1950.
Photos released by Pyongyang's KCNA showed Kim, in a black suit, laying a wreath with a red ribbon at the site, officially known as the Chinese People's Volunteers Martyrs' Cemetery.
The wreath's ribbon read: "Martyrs of the Chinese People's Volunteers will Be Immortal".
He was also seen holding a rose to be laid on the graves, flanked by high-level Pyongyang officials wearing military uniforms.
Kim said the Chinese soldier's "sacred struggle" for "accomplishing the cause of anti-imperialist independence and socialism" would be "reliably carried forward through generations", according to KCNA.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un visits the Chinese People's Volunteer Army Martyrs' cemetery
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un visits the Chinese People's Volunteer Army Martyrs' cemetery in this photo released on July 26, 2023 by North Korea's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).
gazette.com