North Korea’s Grinch: Kim tightens Christmas crackdown by outlawing drinking and singing
CHRISTMAS cheer was in short supply in North Korea today with despotic leader Kim Jong-un banning all celebrations linked to the season of goodwill and peace to all men.
By SIMON OSBORNE
Express.co.uk
Mon, Dec 25, 2017
Gatherings involving alcohol and singing have been banned by the dictator who last year cancelled Christmas and ordered the few Christians in the hermit state to honour his grandma Kim Jong-suk rather than the birth of Jesus.
Jong-suk — who was born on Christmas Eve in 1919 — was an anti-Japanese guerrilla and Communist activist, wife of North Korea’s first dictator, Kim Il-sung, and former leader Kim Jong-il’s mother.
Many pay homage to the “Sacred Mother of the Revolution”, who died under mysterious circumstances in 1949, by visiting her tomb at Christmas.
South Korea’s National Intelligence Service (NIS) said Kim had introduced this year’s even more stringent anti-Christmas measures in a bid to stop dissent as sanctions imposed by the United Nations over his country’s nuclear program begin to take hold.
The NIS said: “North Korea has devised a system whereby party organs report people’s economic hardships on a daily basis, and it has banned any gatherings related to drinking, singing and other entertainment and is strengthening control of outside information.”
Opportunities to spread goodwill and cheer have been few in the repressive nation, which bans religious worship except for the founding first family.
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