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KCNA, KNS via AFP - Getty Images
North Korean leader Kim Jong Il (center) wears his famous parka while inspecting the Pyongyang Silk Mill factory on January 17, 2009.
Updated at 12:04 p.m. ET: BEIJING – Only days before the first anniversary of Kim Jong Il's death, the stirring tributes to North Korea's late strongman referred to reverently there as "The Dear Leader" have begun in earnest.
North Korean state media, KCNA, posted a stirring celebration of Kim on Monday which included a video tribute entitled "Kim Jong Il is immortal as sun" as well as an opinion piece that fondly remembered him as a "peerless sage of mankind, possessed with warm humanity, broad magnanimity and noble sense of moral obligation."
As kind as that line was, state media saved its warmest words not for Kim, but for his jacket. And not just any jacket: his "threadbare and discolored" parka.
In a radio essay entitled "Parka of Kim Jong Il during his field guidance" on North Korean broadcasting service, Voice of Korea, the former leader's weathered jacket is hailed time and again as a "symbol of the Songun revolution," or the North Korean principle championed throughout the Kim dynasty of "military first revolutionary leadership."
Set to swelling nationalist music, the reader's voice rises and falls lyrically for nearly four glorious minutes, opening the piece with a verbose expression of national grief over the passing of Kim.
"One year has passed since everything writhed in agony and the people's wailing swept the whole country at the thunderbolt-like news that Kim Jong Il on the forced march of high intensity for the people had passed away on the running train in December last year."
Kcna / AFP - Getty Images
A pictorial look at the North Korean leader through the years
The reader continues by telling the emotional story behind the great parka -- which is described as an "incredible witness of history."
"With ardent yearning for Kim Jong Il .... the Korean people warmly look back again upon his noble life," the reader says. "They are reminded of the parka worn by him until the last period of his life.
"One day great Kim Jong Il, while giving important instructions to officials, referred to his parka," the reader breathlessly recounts, "He [Kim] earnestly said: 'I began to wear this parka from the arduous march after the demise of President Kim Il Sung. I am still wearing this, unable to forget the grim history.'"
Kim Jong Il look-alike admits it may be time to hang up his dark glasses
As the story goes, Kim Jong Il wore the jacket for more than 10 years -- or for "so long that it became threadbare and discolored."
The reader added: "His parka was that of a great father, with which he kept all the people on this land from snow, rain and cold."
The state news agency in North Korea reports they have found an ancient unicorn lair in the capital, Pyongyang, but experts on the country say this is likely leadership using propaganda to make themselves seem superhuman. NBC's Michelle Kosinski reports.
North Korean eyes today might be on the parka but they will be trained towards the skies later this month as the reclusive nation attempts to launch another rocket into space.
The launch will be North Korea's second this year after a failed launch in April of a Kwangmyongsong-2 rocket.
The announced launch has brought international condemnation from the United States as well as regional neighbors like South Korea, Russia and Japan, the latter of which has threatened to shoot down the rocket.
Even traditional ally China has voiced its concern about the launch, worried that the rocket could heighten tensions in the region.
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It's a freakin jacket people! What's the big deal? George Washington had wooden teeth, and that's a whole lot more cool than a dirty jacket. I'll give them $10 for it so they can go buy themselves a Happy Meal and eat for a week.
Dear leader, what's in those bulging pockets. Probably a carton of cigarettes and two bottles of his preferred Connoisseur brandy. Meanwhile, the long suffering plebians in this desolate land are starving.
What did you expect them to say? That the old POS was lazy, dumb, and had no sense of fashion? So those evident facts only make him more populist and more endearing, we are told. All that he ever was in life was the hereditary warden of the world's largest prison. No one alive today in North Korea who has never been anywhere else has ever known freedom; they've just gone from Japanese occupation to Soviet occupation to the dictatorship of three generations of Kims, except for a while in 1950-1951 there was in most of the place a brief American occupation.
"Threadbare and discolored" my arse. Look at the picture from 2009. The jacket looks brand new.
I can't understand how so many people can be bullied into submission by a few miscreants who live the "Life of Reilly" while the masses are practically, and in some cases, literally starving to death.
I served in South Korea from 1977 to 1978, and we always had to beef up security on the base perimeter during the winter months. Because, Il Jong's father, Kim Il Sung would say each year that he was "going to spend (his) birthday in Seoul." The birthday was during the winter month's and that proclamation was always taken as a threat to invade the south.
South Korea was a poverty stricken country when I was there 35 years ago. The North, under communist rule, was/is far worse.
What's more, life is cheap to the Kim family. Remember the brutal beatings endured by the crew of the USS Pueblo? Beatings that continued for more than ten (10) months after North Korea seized the ship in international waters. Also, let us not forget the two US Army officers who were hacked to death inside the Joint Security area of the DMZ in the summer of 1976 by members of the North Korean military. Their only misdeed? Pruning a tree that blocked the vision of a U.N. observation post.
Even the Germans did not endure the tyranny of Hitler for as long as the North Korean people have put up with the Kims'. I just don't understand it. Maybe nobody told them that freedom must be earned, and a little revolution every now and then aint a bad thing.
Oh, and as for this non-sensical statement.....
ah.....I think not. Here's my holiday advice to the North Korean People, and it's the best gift I can give them; REVOLT, REVOLT, REVOLT!!!!!!!!!! The sooner you rid yourselves of these SCUMBAGS the better off you, and furture generations of Koreans will be.
If you think that the North Koreans are ridiculous, spend some time watching South Korean dramas. North Korea is a comically cast, tragically directed and poorly acted South Korean drama. As much as I love the Korean people, it seems to me that they will never completely shed the dead weight in their culture. It seems to me that Korea will always be divided and there will always be too many people on the wrong side, on either side, of the 38th parallel.
"peerless sage of mankind, possessed with warm humanity, broad magnanimity and noble sense of moral obligation."
Also known as crazy!
Kim Jong mentally Ill. If you think North Koreans are ridiculous, spend some time watching South Korean dramas. There will always be too many people, on both sides, on the wrong side of the 38th parallel.
The Great Parka and a Unicorn Den in the same day.
And NK wonders why the rest of the world doesn't trust them with Atomic weapons.
Howy: Do you think the world trusts us an Israel with nuclear weapons?
I don't trust much of anyone with nuclear weapons, but having said that, if you don't understand the difference between Israel and the PRK, you have no sense of history, society, politics or much of anything else requiring knowledge, insight, or judgement.
Bwahahahaha...Oh, wait! They are serious!
Why do you keep doing stories about these WACKOS??? Leave them alone. Do some human interest stories about our homeless or something meaningful. God knows you could use some experience with investigative journalism.
^@#&$%* the parka. I want the hat.
Thank you for that stirring article about a killer MSNBC, or should I say North Korean state news.....
Is that LL Bean?
Nice jacket. I wonder how many died in the NK gulag while he was sporting that jacket.
He wore his killin' jacket for that. He only wore the one in this pic. when he wasn't worried about blood splatter.
First this then the Unicorn story????? LOL. Kim Jong II called his people his children and now we know why, because they will believe anything they tell them. Remember children Santa Clause will be here soon so you better be good. Oh and don't forget the Easter Bunny.........
Cut from the same cloth as Hugo Chavez and Barak Dohbama, Leadership that just doesn't quite get you there but never goes away.
If that were true you'd be executed by the state for that comment, exaggerate much?
Where do these people come from? Hugo Chavez? You lost border.....didn't get the memo? Obama won.
North Korea, Just like heaven, only not as celestial.
Gee,everytime I hear someone complain about our politicians,I think to myself,we have it pretty good.Most hysterics come from the Congress.The old farts who strike it rich and have to be taken out in a body bag for anyone else to get their job.
I noticed the politicans have warm coats, but the female worker behind them doesn't have one. Huh???????
If I had of known he needed a coat, I would have sent him one as i have some extra , and they were made overseas.... I got the AC on here in Texas... Hope he doesn't freeze ....
Doubt that it's all that cold where he's gone, unless of course it turns out that the old line about "cold as Hell" is actually literal.
What about his threadbare underwear that he didn't change since his father's death? When are they going to break out in song about that?
You mean that he was both a Communist and a Mormon?
I say they get the coat out of storage , cut it up into little pieces (about the size of a small flag), attach them to long sticks and wave them in the air at the border with S. Korea and, thereby, finally put an end to all this non-sense and the degradation of their fellow human beings in those concentration camps in NK. At least then the coat will actually , for once, be serving a useful and noble purpose.
Why are all of North Korea's leaders fat pigs?'
Don't underestimate the power of a single garment to be able to provoke the emotion of an entire nation. Remember the little blue dress??
They're ALL nuts if you ask me.
I heard that his shoes are jealous.
Give the piece-of-sh** jacket to the people . . . at least they could burn it to keep warm for awhile.
This regime is beyond any intelligent comprehension.
Many in this world say the same about you and America.
Frank, feel free to rush right over there. Maybe you'd fit right in, as you show every evidence of having already been through one of their known national specialties, brainwashing.
How much longer can the idiots in power keep control of the country? A freakin' flash mob would take over the government in about an hour if they had enough people. Only a matter of time. Humans can only put up with bullsh*t for so long. The N. Korean leaders are just plain stupid, but then, most dictators are.
Has anyone checked recently to see what sort of drugs the government of North Korea is on?
Dumb, absurd, stupid, outrageous....I am running out of clean words
I'm always curious when I see news from the North Korean state media. Is the North Korean media overly epic, or does it just translate into English that way?
Apparently none of them are actually conversant enough in real, vernacular English not to come across as turgid, melodramatic, and overwrought. Sort of like Shep Smith on FOX News, only even worse.