Even if there is always doubt, Ri Chung Hee, a figure in North Korean television, must now be 79 years old. We are interested in it thanks to the hot snap between the two Koreas – the firing of missiles from the North, in a context where the South has also resumed its military exercises. As always, here in Europe, new nuclear tests are expected. A media figure is associated with these essays: precisely this Ri Chun Hee.
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Even if officially, she has been retired for ten years, it is her that the dignitaries call back to make the buzz. The regime has understood that the media around the world have identified her as the presenter of the big days. It’s part of the strategy, part of the propaganda. Madame Li therefore arrives in the studios of Korean Central Television. And here’s what happens: January 2016, between two musical excerpts, she proudly announces that “the first H-bomb was successfully fired this morning at 10 a.m. on January 6, 2016”. The pink outfit is always the same. A Choson Chogori, the traditional garment reserved for special occasions such as weddings.
This North Korean news star didn’t start out in journalism. And for good reason, there is no school of journalism. She began with cinema in the 1960s, after very advanced studies in dramatic arts and cinema in the best university in the country, in Pyongyang. She was 28 when she was chosen to embody the voice of the state. We are then in 1971. Her official biography says that she owes this recruitment to the fact of coming from a very modest family. Again: mistrust. Poor or not, the only certainty is that politically, his family should not pose a problem.
In any case, she quickly rises in rank. Three years later she is chief news anchor. And will do this for 40 years, while continuing to train in the art of mime. With these gestures, these expressions, these grandiloquent intonations, it seems to us very excessive. But it is fair, credible for Koreans, only because it is extreme! Korean cinema is also always extreme: in horror, in comedy, in scatology… And in the end, as the North Korean newspaper wrote in 2009 Chosun Monthly : “When Ri announces information and statements, the haters tremble with fear.”
The presenter/spokesperson delivers both good and bad news. The first significant date is also 1994, when she announced the death of Kim Il Sung. For the occasion, the tunic is black. In 2011, she was literally in tears for the death of her son, Kim Jong Il, the one she was closest to. For the nuclear tests in 2006: it is obviously a pink tunic for the first. The same for the following ones, in particular that of 2016.
The needs of propaganda can also lead him to other subjects. In 2020, when rumors about Kim Jong Un’s health swell, she steps in to show us inaugurating a fertilizer factory. In August, then in November, each time after weeks of absence, she announces to Koreans and the world that he has chaired a meeting on Covid-19. So many good and loyal services that have earned him, since the beginning of this year, to live in a luxury apartment in the heart of Pyongyang. The day she received it, in the presence of Kim Jong Un, she explained to the official news agency that her family was “stayed up all night crying with deep gratitude”.
Will she end up handing over? Not right away for the big announcements. But several British media claim that she is preparing the next generation. In fact, for several years, we can now see its absolute doubles on the air. Same outfit, same brunette hairstyle, short bob and tone! To be mistaken!