This file photo, carried by North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency on Dec. 4, 2019, shows the North’s leader Kim Jog-un riding on a horse to climb up Mount Paektu, the highest peak on the Korean Peninsula. (Image courtesy of Yonhap)
SEOUL, Dec. 8 (Korea Bizwire) — North Korea on Friday called on its people to climb up Mount Paektu in winter to better learn about “revolutionary spirits.”
The Rodong Sinmun, the main newspaper, reported that around 120,000 people at some 2,400 organizations have gone up Mount Paektu so far along the path on which North Korean leader Kim Jong-un rode his white horse in 2019.
North Korea claims Mount Paektu, the highest peak on the Korean Peninsula and located on the border with China, is a sacred site tied to the Kim dynasty. North Korea has idolized the ruling family as the “Paektu bloodline.”
North Korea said Kim’s late father, former leader Kim Jong-il, was born in a military hideout on Mount Paektu, despite the fact that he was born in Russia’s Far Eastern city of Khabarovsk.
In December 2019, Kim Jong-un visited the mountain, along with key party officials, ahead of the year-end deadline that Pyongyang set for the United Sates to come up with new proposals for their stalled denuclearization talks.
The North Korean leader held three meetings with former U.S. President Donald Trump, but denuclearization talks have remained stalled since the collapse of their Hanoi summit in February 2019.
(Yonhap)
