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NHK
08-07-2025
- Politics
- NHK
North Korean leader Kim visits mausoleum on 31st anniversary of founder's death
North Korean media have reported that the country's leader Kim Jong Un visited the mausoleum of his late grandfather and state founder Kim Il Sung on the 31st anniversary of his death. North Korea's ruling Workers' Party newspaper Rodong Sinmun said on Tuesday that Kim Jong Un visited a palace in Pyongyang at midnight to pay respect to the late leader, whose body lies in state there. The newspaper ran an editorial praising Kim Il Sung's achievements, and called for loyalty to Kim Jong Un. It said North Korea has developed the world's most powerful weapons and the strength of the country's military technology has become irreversible under Kim Jong Un's leadership. South Korean media say the North Korean leadership aims to boost domestic unity in the run-up to the 80th anniversary in October of the founding of the Workers' Party, and the party's congress, whose schedule has yet to be disclosed.
See - Sada Elbalad
08-07-2025
- Politics
- See - Sada Elbalad
North Korea leader Visits Kumsusan Palace of Sun
Basant Ahmed All the people across the DPRK are filled with ardent yearning and boundless reverence for north Korean President Kim Il Sung, founding father of socialist Korea and great sage of the revolution, on the occasion of the 31st anniversary of his demise, KCNA reported. Kim Jong Un, general secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea and president of the State Affairs of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, visited the Kumsusan Palace of the Sun at 00:00 on July 8. Accompanying him were Pak Thae Song, Choe Ryong Hae and Jo Yong Won, members of the Presidium of the Political Bureau of the WPK Central Committee, other senior officials of the Party and the government, leading officials of the WPK Central Committee, the Standing Committee of the Supreme People's Assembly, the Cabinet, commissions and ministries and commanding officers of armed forces organs. A flower basket in the name of the respected Comrade Kim Jong Un was laid before the statues of President Kim Il Sung and Chairman Kim Jong Il. Also laid were the flower baskets in the name of the WPK Central Committee, the DPRK State Affairs Commission, the Standing Committee of the DPRK Supreme People's Assembly and the DPRK Cabinet. Kim Jong Un paid high tribute to the great leaders in front of the statues. At the halls, where the President and the Chairman lie in state, he made a deep bow of best wishes for their immortality. He affirmed that the revolutionary careers and exploits of the President and the Chairman will shine forever along with the eternal prosperity of our socialist state which is successfully realizing the ideals of the people in a comprehensive way, winning victory after victory from one century into the next. read more Gold prices rise, 21 Karat at EGP 3685 NATO's Role in Israeli-Palestinian Conflict US Expresses 'Strong Opposition' to New Turkish Military Operation in Syria Shoukry Meets Director-General of FAO Lavrov: confrontation bet. nuclear powers must be avoided News Iran Summons French Ambassador over Foreign Minister Remarks News Aboul Gheit Condemns Israeli Escalation in West Bank News Greek PM: Athens Plays Key Role in Improving Energy Security in Region News One Person Injured in Explosion at Ukrainian Embassy in Madrid News Israeli-Linked Hadassah Clinic in Moscow Treats Wounded Iranian IRGC Fighters News China Launches Largest Ever Aircraft Carrier Sports Former Al Zamalek Player Ibrahim Shika Passes away after Long Battle with Cancer Videos & Features Tragedy Overshadows MC Alger Championship Celebration: One Fan Dead, 11 Injured After Stadium Fall Lifestyle Get to Know 2025 Eid Al Adha Prayer Times in Egypt Business Fear & Greed Index Plummets to Lowest Level Ever Recorded amid Global Trade War News Flights suspended at Port Sudan Airport after Drone Attacks News "Tensions Escalate: Iran Probes Allegations of Indian Tech Collaboration with Israeli Intelligence" Videos & Features Video: Trending Lifestyle TikToker Valeria Márquez Shot Dead during Live Stream Technology 50-Year Soviet Spacecraft 'Kosmos 482' Crashes into Indian Ocean
The Diplomat
08-07-2025
- Politics
- The Diplomat
Synthetic Sovereign: How Kim Jong Un Could Rule Forever as a Deepfake
In the age of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI), even death may not end the reign of authoritarian leaders. Nowhere is this possibility more plausible — or more dangerous — than in North Korea, where the regime's legitimacy is built on myth, image, and absolute control. Using GenAI, Kim Jong Un could effectively 'live forever' as a deity, projecting power and command even from beyond the grave. Much of Kim Il Sung's rise was built on controlling narratives and distorting the reality of those he ruled. He would go on to call himself the 'Supreme Leader' and tell people he had been chosen by a higher power — essentially divine. After Kim Il Sung's death, the myth of his immortality was reimagined as a divine transition from father to son. In its preamble, the 1998 North Korean Constitution referred to itself as the 'Kim Il Sung Constitution,' which legally embodies Kim Il Sung's juche state ideology. Kim Il Sung was deified as 'the Eternal President of the Republic.' Essentially, this means that only Kim Il Sung was, is, and shall ever be worthy of the role of president which is enshrined in the preface of the new constitution. This leadership-affirmed truth thus justified the abolishment of the presidency. The Kims used systemic disinformation campaigns to fortify their roles as eternal leaders long before the advent of GenAI and deepfake technology. Today, GenAI systems, such as transformer-based architectures and voice-cloning models, can generate ultra-realistic video, audio, and text. Trained on extensive datasets of Kim Jong Un's appearances, gestures, and vocal patterns, GenAI systems could now construct a disturbingly convincing simulacrum that would keep Kim alive with no one the wiser. In the early days of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned the world that Russia's digital disinformation machinery would create a deepfake of him admitting defeat and surrendering. By mid-March 2022, a deepfake of Zelenskyy appeared with just this message. The video was debunked due to its rather crude audio and video, but not before it spread across social media and briefly appeared on Ukrainian television. Months later, the mayors of Berlin, Madrid, and Vienna each held extended video-based conversations with a deepfake version of Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko. Why not a deepfake Kim? Whenever Kim disappears from public view, rumors begin to circulate quickly. Deaths of long-time leaders such as Kim often spark intense political infighting or public unrest that could plunge their countries into chaos. Considering North Korea has nuclear warheads, that is chaos the global community cannot afford. Any sudden reappearance may catch some by surprise, including prominent defectors and analysts who had publicly predicted his demise. Now imagine if those images had not been genuine but instead generated by artificial intelligence. North Korea largely exists in a digital void, and everything is closely monitored. Average citizens do not have open access to the internet, and things like TV and radio are locked to state-run content. Phones cannot call outside the country, and foreign broadcasts are blocked or jammed. The government has taken modern technology and twisted it into a tool for deeper control. Even smartphones, which are approved by the regime, cannot go online in any real sense. They are only hooked up to a heavily controlled national network — basically a censored version of the internet. If someone wants to install an app, they cannot just download it. They must visit a government-approved store in person. Such synthetic media could be used to produce televised addresses, battlefield inspections, or policy announcements. In a place as secretive and tightly managed as North Korea, it is entirely possible that even top officials would not know for sure whether Kim was still alive. A convincingly faked version of him — broadcasting messages, holding meetings, making appearances — would not just be a ghost of the past. It could serve as a mechanism for maintaining order, monitoring dissent, and keeping the illusion of leadership intact. During armed conflict, a fabricated Kim could show up on screens, seemingly directing military operations or giving the green light for attacks, including a nuclear attack. A state-run broadcast might convince foreign governments that the chain of command was still intact. Would the United States, its partners, or allies have time to verify a video's authenticity before choosing whether, or how, to respond if an attack occurred? In this context, GenAI becomes more than propaganda, it becomes a weapon of mass deception. Kim remains a critical part of stability in North Korea due to his cult-figure status. North Korean political leaders are deified and worshipped as gods. Any potential death could trigger unrest, creating a power struggle behind closed doors with consequences throughout the region. But with today's synthetic media tools, there is a chilling alternative: even in death, Kim's likeness could live on — forever. He could appear on screens, issuing carefully crafted messages from beyond the grave. For a regime built on myth, a digitally immortal leader is not only plausible — it is ideologically coherent. Like his grandfather Kim Il Sung, still revered as the 'Eternal President,' Kim Jong Un could rule indefinitely through synthetic media. While this is indeed concerning, there exists yet another danger called the 'liar's dividend.' The liar's dividend is when someone uses the possibility of fake content to undermine legitimate content in their favor. In a world where nothing can be trusted or believed, even a genuine event– including death — could be called propaganda. If a video emerged showing the death of Kim, Pyongyang could deny it as foreign disinformation. Conversely, a fake video could be passed off as real, manipulating public perception both inside North Korea and abroad. There is an ironic silver lining, however. Instability in the region is not optimal. If Kim's Politburo releases a deepfake Kim after his death, this could give the regime more time to pick another figurehead, staving off any unrest — perhaps the rest of the world would prefer that over instability with nuclear weapons. In nuclear diplomacy, ambiguity can be dangerous. If adversaries hesitate, or overreact, based on inauthentic cues, the consequences could be catastrophic. This fusion of authoritarianism, isolationism, and GenAI creates a new political phenomenon: the synthetic sovereign. In North Korea, where reality has always been more engineered than observed, deepfake technology could complete Kim Jong Un's transformation from mortal ruler into digital myth — and his isolated people would not be the wiser. This is not a dystopian future. It is a very real scenario with profound implications for all of us, and the meaning of truth itself. In a world where even the dead can declare war, the greatest threat may not be what Kim does while alive, but what he appears to do after he is gone.
Egypt Independent
25-06-2025
- Politics
- Egypt Independent
The US Army once ruled Pyongyang and 5 other things you might not know about the Korean War
CNN — Seventy-five years ago this week, more than 135,000 North Korean troops invaded South Korea, starting a war that cost millions of lives and left scars that linger to this day. Yet, the Korean War has been forever overshadowed by World War II, a much larger conflict that ended less than five years earlier. Even the US Army refers to Korea as 'the Forgotten War' – despite more than 36,000 American lives lost. Sixteen nations, including the United States, sent combat troops in aid of South Korea under the United Nations Command. Chinese troops intervened on the North Korean side. War broke out on June 25, 1950, when North Korean forces stormed across the 38th parallel dividing North and South Korea. An armistice signed on July 27, 1953, stopped the conflict, but the war never officially ended because there was no peace treaty. While the twists and turns of today's US-North Korea relationship have put a spotlight on the Korean War's legacy, it is still a widely overlooked conflict. Here are six things you might not know about the Korean War: The US Army once controlled one of the world's most secretive cities It's almost impossible for Americans to travel to North Korea or its capital city Pyongyang. US passport holders are not allowed to go there without special permission from the US State Department. But for eight weeks in 1950, Pyongyang was under control of the US Army. Soldiers of the 1st Cavalry Division in Pyongyang in 1950 Everett/Shutterstock On October 19 of that year, the US Army's 1st Cavalry Division along with a division of South Korean soldiers captured the North Korean capital, according to US Army histories. The US forces quickly made themselves at home, according to the histories. By October 22, the US Eighth Army had set up its advance headquarters in what was the headquarters building for North Korean leader Kim Il Sung. US Marines take cover behind a barricade as street fighting rages in Pyongyang. On the wall in the background are images of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin and North Korean leader Kim Il Sung.A picture from the time shows an American intelligence officer sitting at Kim's desk with a portrait of Soviet Union leader Joseph Stalin hanging on the wall behind him. But the US military's occupation of Pyongyang was short-lived. When Chinese troops entered the war in late November 1950, they quickly pushed south and vanquished US forces from Pyongyang by December 5. The US dropped more bombs on North Korea than on the entire region during WWII Most images of the Korean War are of ground battles fought in places like the Chosin Reservoir and Incheon. But much of the destruction wreaked on North Korea by the US military was done in a relentless bombing campaign. During the three years of the Korean War, US aircraft dropped 635,000 tons of bombs – both high explosive and incendiary – on North Korea. That's more than the 500,000 tons of bombs the US dropped in the Pacific in the entirety of the Second World War, according to figures cited by historian Charles Armstrong in the Asia-Pacific Journal. US Air Force B-29 Superfortresses dropping bombs during the Korean War. Keystone/Journalists, international observers and American prisoners of war who were in North Korea during the war reported nearly every substantial building had been destroyed. By November 1950, North Korea was advising its citizens to dig holes for housing and shelter. North Korea didn't keep official casualty figures from the bombings, but information obtained from Russian archives by the Wilson Center's Cold War International History Project put the number at more than 280,000. Gen. Curtis LeMay, the father of US strategic bombing and the architect of fire raids that destroyed swathes of Japanese cities in World War II, said this of the American bombing of North Korea: 'We went over there and fought the war and eventually burned down every town in North Korea anyway, some way or another.' An American soldier walks around the rubble of Hamhung, Korea, circa 1950. stringer/afp/getty images Armstrong said that bombing of North Korea has effects that linger to this day. 'The DPRK (Democratic Republic of Korea) government never forgot the lesson of North Korea's vulnerability to American air attack, and for half a century after the Armistice continued to strengthen antiaircraft defenses, build underground installations, and eventually develop nuclear weapons to ensure that North Korea would not find itself in such a position again,' Armstrong wrote. North Korea convinced the Soviet Union and Joseph Stalin to let the war happen When World War II ended, control of the Korean Peninsula – occupied by defeated Japanese troops – was divided between the Soviet Union in the north and the United States in the south. Kim Il Sung, the leader of North Korea, wanted to unite the two Koreas under communist rule and sought permission of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin to do so by force, according to records from the Wilson Center. A portrait of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin is prepared for a parade in Pyongyang in July Kim's first request to invade in March 1949, Stalin was wary and did not want to be pulled into a conflict with the United States, which still had occupation troops in South Korea. But when those troops were pulled in the summer of 1949, Stalin's opposition softened, and by April 1950 the Soviet leader was ready to hear Kim out again when the North Korean leader visited Moscow. Stalin told Kim that the USSR would back the invasion, but only if Kim got communist China to approve too. Emboldened by communist China's victory over Nationalist forces in 1949 – in a civil war in which Washington did not intervene – Chinese leader Mao Zedong agreed and offered to be a backup force for North Korean troops in the eventuality the US intervened. With that, Kim had the green light to invade. The Korean War saved Taiwan from a potential communist takeover In 1949, communist China was amassing forces along its coast to invade Taiwan, the island to which Chiang Kai-shek and his Nationalist forces had fled after losing to Mao and the communists in the Chinese Civil War. But the outbreak of the Korean War put a big roadblock in the way of communist China's plans – the US Navy. Fearful of the fighting in Korea spreading across East Asia, President Harry Truman dispatched US warships to the waters between China and Taiwan. The US State Department tells how close Taiwan, now a self-governed democaracy that Beijing still claims as part of China, came to a potential communist takeover. 'In late 1949 and early 1950, American officials were prepared to let PRC (People's Republic of China) forces cross the Strait and defeat Chiang, but after the outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950, the United States sent its Seventh Fleet into the Taiwan Strait to prevent the Korean conflict from spreading south,' reads a passage from the department's Office of the Historian. 'The appearance of the Seventh Fleet angered the Chinese communists, who transferred their troops poised for an invasion of Taiwan to the Korean front,' it reads. By October 19, 1950, 12 divisions of communist Chinese troops, more than a quarter-million men, were in North Korea, according to a Brookings Institution account. Those Chinese troops would inflict horrific losses on the US and South Korean troops they faced, eventually driving them out of North Korea completely. But China also suffered massive losses; more than 180,000 of its troops were killed. The first jet-vs-jet dogfight F-80 Shooting Star Korean War-era fighter at National Musuem of the US Air Force US Air Force Jet fighters entered military service in World War II with the introduction of the German Messerschmidt 262. But the jet fighters didn't go head-to-head in a 'Top Gun'-style dogfight until the Korean War. Records seem to agree that first dogfight occurred over Sinuiju in North Korea, near the Yalu River, and its border with China on November 8, 1950. The Americans, flying F-80 Shooting Star jets, were confronted by MiG-15s, Soviet-made jets that were probably being piloted by Soviet pilots from bases in China. According to a report from the historian of the US Air Force's 51st Fighter Wing, eight to 12 MiGs came after an American flight of four F-80s that day. In a 60-second encounter with one of those MIGs, Air Force 1st Lt. Russell Brown hit a MiG-15 with fire from his jet's cannon and saw it explode in flames, becoming the first jet fighter pilot to score a kill in a dogfight, the report says. But others dispute that account, with a report from the US Naval Institute (USNI) saying that Soviet records show no MiGs were lost that day. What is certain is that the next day, November 9, 1950, US Navy Lt. Cmdr. William Amen, flying an F9F fighter off the aircraft carrier USS Philippine Sea, shot down a MiG-15 during airstrikes against bridges on the Yalu River. Soviet records confirm the MiG-15 loss that day, according to the USNI report. Four F-80 jet fighters flying at 30,000 feet on their flight from a Japanese base to their mission against the North Korean cCommunist army columns, Korea, July 13, in the war, the US introduced the F-86 jet to the Korean conflict. That plane won fame in battles against the MiG-15 in what was know as 'MiG Alley,' the area along the Korea-China border, where the Soviet pilots flew out of bases on the Chinese side. The National Museum of the US Air Force in Ohio explains MiG Alley this way: 'Large formations of MiGs would lie in wait on the Manchurian side of the border. When UN aircraft entered MiG Alley, these MiGs would swoop down from high altitude to attack. If the MiGs ran into trouble, they would try to escape back over the border into communist China. (To prevent a wider war, UN pilots were ordered not to attack targets in Manchuria.) Even with this advantage, communist pilots still could not compete against the better-trained Sabre pilots of the US Air Force, who scored a kill ratio of about 8:1 against the MiGs.' The United States never declared war Though millions of lives were lost during the fighting on the Korean Peninsula between 1950 and 1953, they were technically casualties of what was called a 'police action.' Under the US Constitution, only the US Congress can declare war on another nation. But it has not done so since World War II. When North Korea invaded the South in 1950, US President Harry Truman sent the US military to intervene as part of a combined effort approved by the United Nations Security Council. 'Fifteen other nations also sent troops under the UN command. Truman did not seek a formal declaration of war from Congress; officially, America's presence in Korea amounted to no more than a 'police action,'' reads a passage from the US National Archives. 1952: US soldiers dig in to a hill in Korea during the Korean war Hulton Archive/And those police actions have become the norm for US military intervention ever since. The Vietnam War, the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Kosovo, all have seen US troops enter combat under congressional authorizations for the use of military force (AUMF), according to the US House of Representatives website. Though the AUMF had been around since the beginning of the republic, 'after World War II … AUMFs became much broader, often granting Presidents sweeping authority to engage America's military around the world,' the US House website says. 'The war was the first large overseas US conflict without a declaration of war, setting a precedent for the unilateral presidential power exercised today,' Emory University law professor Mary Dudziak wrote in a 2019 opinion column for the Washington Post. 'The Korean War has helped to enable this century's forever wars,' Dudziak wrote.
Times
19-05-2025
- Politics
- Times
Kim Jong-un kneels at grave of mentor who called him ‘Jong Unny'
One of the perks of being the hereditary dictator of the world's most repressive state is that you do not have to kneel before anyone. But for the third year in a row, North Korea's supreme leader, Kim Jong-un, has bent his knee in honour of a man almost unknown to the rest of the world, who knew him by the nickname 'Jong Unny'. Photographs in state media showed Kim laying a flower at the at the grave of Hyon Chol-hae, a senior military officer who died in 2022 at the age of 87, in a gesture that offers intriguing insights into Kim's personality and leadership style. Hyon served under Kim's grandfather, Kim Il-sung, and his father, Kim Jong-il. As a mentor to the current
