NORTH KOREA: North Korean troops threw themselves on exploding grenades to protect portraits of leader Kim Jong-il and his late father Kim Il-sung, Pyongyang's official KCNA news agency reported yesterday.
A pilot, using what little flying time the North Korean air force gets, nosedived his burning plane into the sea rather than eject as ordered because he did not wish to endanger Kim Jong-il, KCNA said.
The agency's list of deeds extolling devotion to the country's leaders left out many details, including when and where they happened and how the pilot might have endangered the younger Kim by ejecting. The incidents appeared to have been in training rather than combat - the Korean War was between 1950 and 1953. But the report fits a pattern analysts in South Korea say is part of a propaganda response to the effect of market-style economic reforms and pressures on the leadership amid a crisis over the communist North's nuclear weapons.
"Soldiers covered hand-grenades with their bodies before explosion to protect portraits of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il," said the agency. "And service persons plunged themselves into raging flames to protect trees bearing slogans written by anti-Japanese guerrillas."
An unplanned and unwanted side-effect of the reforms North Korea began in July 2002 has been greater access to information about the outside world, courtesy of border trade with China and smuggled South Korean video tapes.
An ideological campaign has been stepped up to bolster Kim Jong-il's image as regional powers step up pressure for Pyongyang to return to talks on its nuclear programmes.