From South Korea's Chosun Ilbo:
North Korea has bestowed a hero's title on a transporter erector launcher that was used to fire a Hwasong-17 intercontinental ballistic missile.
This seems to be the first time that an inanimate object has been honored with the crackpot country's highest medal, reflecting the strategic importance the North places on its missile program.
The standing committee of the Supreme People's Assembly awarded the highest national honor of "Hero and Gold Star Medal and Order of National Flag 1st Class" to the Hwasong-17 launching vehicle, the official Korean Central News Agency reported.
No doubt the missile feels suitably humbled by such an honour.
Meanwhile, North Korea's state media have been showing more photos of Kim's daughter. The Rodong Sinmun daily featured a group photo marking the launch of the Hwasong-17 with the caption: "We shall unwaveringly follow and show loyalty only to the Baekdu bloodline" -- meaning the Kim dynasty that traces its ancestry to Mt. Baekdu.
The photo shows Kim's daughter shaking hands with a commander in a military uniform who is bowing slightly while she stands upright and clasps his hand in both of hers. When she was first wheeled out by the North Korean propaganda machine on Nov. 19, the girl was described as a "beloved" child, but she seems to have been promoted to "most precious."
Naturally there's talk that she's now being groomed as next in line. From the Times:
Kim Jong-un appeared with his young daughter again yesterday as he claimed North Korea was creating the world’s most powerful nuclear weapons arsenal at a ceremony celebrating the successful test of its latest missile.
It is the second public appearance of Kim’s daughter — believed to be called Ju-ae and aged about ten.
At the ceremony, Kim promoted more than 100 officials and scientists who had worked on the Hwasong-17 intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), which is believed to be capable of striking mainland America. Kim called it “the world’s strongest strategic weapon” and said his nation’s scientists had achieved a “wonderful leap forward in the development of the technology of mounting nuclear warheads on ballistic missiles,” according to the North’s official Korean Central News Agency.
The Rodong Sinmun state newspaper carried more than a dozen photographs of Kim’s daughter, who resembles her mother, Ri Sol-ju....
Ankit Panda, an expert with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told AP: “This is certainly striking. The photograph of Kim Ju-ae standing alongside her father while being celebrated by technicians and scientists involved in the latest ICBM launch would support the idea that this is the start of her being positioned as a potential successor.”
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