Mural of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il: "Uphold them forever as the sun of Juche!", Bukseong and Chollima Street, Pyongyang (photographed 2019)
A photograph of a large painted mural on a stone plinth at a street crossing in Pyongyang, apartment towers behind. It shows Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il, both smiling and waving, above a crowd holding flowers and balloons, with the caption 'Let us uphold them forever as the sun of Juche!' The tell: the leaders are shown as the source of light and warmth and the crowd as joyful devotion, so loyalty is presented as a shared emotional identity rather than an argument.
- Date
- July 14, 2019
- Period
- Contemporary
- Made by
- Workers' Party of Korea (public mural; issuer not named on the object)
- Region
- East Asia
- Country
- North Korea
- Medium
- Photograph
- Issuer type
- Party
- Leader
- Kim Jong UN
- Audience
- Domestic public
- Purpose
- Commemorate
- Techniques
- Glittering generalitiesIdentity fusion
- Leader
- Kim Jong Un
- Source
- Identified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they are
- Source
- Wikimedia Commons, retrieved October 2, 2026
- Rights
- Openly licensed (CC BY-SA 4.0, per Wikimedia Commons)
Jan Engelhardt, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Text on the object
주체의 태양으로 영원히 받들어모시리!
Let us uphold them forever as the sun of Juche!
Caption line read from the 1280 px image; the Korean has no explicit object, so 'them' (the two leaders shown) is taken from the picture. Translation by machine, not verified by a fluent reader.
