Putin admires Kim Jong Un, unlike other world leaders, North Koreans are told

Russian President Vladimir Putin looks up to Kim Jong Un with the utmost admiration and respect, North Koreans were told at this week’s mandatory lectures at neighborhood watch unit meetings, two residents told Radio Free Asia. 

The weekly lectures – at which a local party official reads lecture materials received from the central government – are intended to reinforce loyalty to the country’s leadership and Kim’s cult of personality.

“This week’s lecture session informed the residents of the Russian president’s boundless admiration for their leader, Kim Jong Un,” a resident from the northeastern province of North Hamgyong told RFA Korean on condition of anonymity for security reasons. 

“It was intended to promote the high international standing of the marshall,” a reference to Kim, he said.

Russia has been cozying up to North Korea since Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. While many in the international community are hesitant to engage with Russia while the war rages on, North Korea has been more than willing to trade with Russia and publicly declare support for the war.

 The United States has accused Russia of using North Korean weapons in Ukraine, which North Korea and Russia deny. 

Putin and Kim met in the Russian Far East in September 2023, and again in Pyongyang in June 2024.

As evidence of Putin’s admiration for Kim, the lecture listed several examples.

One was that Putin, who is notoriously late for nearly all his meetings with other global leaders, was 30 minutes early for his meeting with Kim in Vladivostok in April 2019, the resident said. 

“Whenever President Putin meets with world leaders, he is late because he looks down on other countries and has a unique sense of superiority,” he said. “But when it comes to The Marshal, he expresses it as admiration.” 

However, the lecture didn’t mention Putin’s visit to Pyongyang in June, when he arrived several hours later than planned, turning what should have been a two-day state visit into a quick one-day stop.

Luxury car

Another example in the lecture was Putin’s gift of a Russian-made luxury sedan to Kim, a resident of the northern province of Ryanggang told RFA on condition of anonymity to speak freely. 

But this generated “a cold atmosphere” in the lecture hall, the second resident said.

“Some residents [privately] protested, saying, ‘If I were the head of the country, I would have asked for food, which the country desperately needs instead of a car,’” he said.

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The apparent point of the lecture was to instill in the public the idea that Russia is being respectful to North Korea – and that other world leaders also yearn to meet Kim, he said.

This wasn’t very convincing to most listeners, he said. 

“Residents who can’t even eat one full meal don’t listen to the government’s propaganda,” he said.

 North Korean authorities also held lectures on similar topics for residents in the early 2000s when they were receiving aid such as rice and fertilizer from South Korea and the international community.

Park Ju Hee, an escapee from Musan, North Hamgyong province, said that aid coming from Western countries at the time was because of the “bold strategy and outstanding leadership” of then leader Kim Jong Il, Kim Jong Un’s father.

Translated by Claire S. Lee. Edited by Eugene Whong and Malcolm Foster.