VIDEO: North Korea’s Kim Jong Un cries as he tells women to have more children
Kim Jong Un has been filmed crying as he called on North Korea’s women to have more children and raise them to love the authoritarian state. Citing state media, the Associated Press news agency said on Monday that Kim’s call was made at North Korea’s National Mothers’ Meeting, the first of its kind in 11 years, amid growing concerns about a drop in the birth rate in the reclusive state.
The North Korean leader was spotted dabbing his eyes with a white handkerchief as he addressed thousands of women gathered at a national mothers’ meeting in Pyongyang. Many in the audience cried with him during the carefully choreographed event.
Kim Jong Un CRYING as he tells North Korean women to have more babies.
The dictator cried during his speech at the National Mothers Meeting, where he urged women to increase the country’s birth rate. pic.twitter.com/J354CyVnln
— Oli London (@OliLondonTV) December 5, 2023
“Stopping the decline in the birth rate and providing good childcare and education are all our family issues that we need to solve together with our mothers,” said Kim, who is speculated to have three children.
The Supreme Leader’s comments come as the United Nations Population Fund estimates that the fertility rate would reach 1.8 in 2023, a sharp decline from previous years. North Korea is not the only country in the region that saw a decline. Neighboring South Korea’s fertility rate fell to a record low of 0.78 last year, while Japan saw its rate fall to 1.26.
The fertility rate is the average number of children women have during their reproductive years.
Not just Kim, we saw many women in the audience crying when the leader spoke. They later greeted him with applause.
“We are faced with a multitude of social tasks that our mothers must tackle together. These tasks include educating their children so that they will steadfastly continue our revolution, eliminating the recently increasing non-socialist practices, promoting family harmony and social unity, establishing a healthy way of cultural and moral life, making the communist virtues and qualities of helping and leading each other forward prevail over our society, halting the declining birth rate, and taking good care of children and educating them effectively,” Kim added.
According to reports in North Korean state media, the country this year introduced a series of benefits for families with three or more children, including preferential free housing schemes, state subsidies, free food, medicine and household items, and education benefits for children.
In the 1970s and 1980s, North Korea introduced contraceptive programs to slow post-war population growth. The Seoul-based Hyundai Research Institute said in its report in August this year that the country’s fertility rate showed a big drop after a famine in the mid-1990s.