In another classroom, children were coloring in Vietnamese and North Korean flags with which they hope to greet Kim. “We really want for Mr. Kim Jong Un, the great leader of the Korean people, to visit our school,” said Ngo Thi Minh Ha, the school’s rector. Apple-cheeked youngsters in traditional national garb meeting a paternal leader is a mainstay of old-style communist iconography, and North Korea is the closest thing left to an old-style communist state. But the ties that once bound Vietnam to North Korea in their fight against the U.S. have long since frayed. A compromise was reached in which two classrooms were named after Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il — the grandfather and father, respectively, of Kim Jong Un — while a kindergarten classroom in Pyongyang was named after Vietnamese revolutionary hero Ho Chi Minh.

Source: National Post February 25, 2019 01:18 UTC