New Delhi: North Korean leader Kim Jong-un was seen wiping tears in front of thousands of "mothers" as he appealed to them to have more children to halt a fall in the country’s birthrate.
In a video, which has now gone viral on social media, he can be seen dabbing his eyes with a handkerchief. Many in the audience can also be seen wiping their tears.
"Preventing a decline in birth rates and good childcare are all of our housekeeping duties we need to handle while working with mothers," Kim was quoted as saying by news agency Reuters during the country’s National Mothers Meeting in Pyongyang on Sunday.
"I too always think about mothers when I have a hard time dealing with the party and the state's work," Kim said.
Addressing the audience, he said that North Korea was being confronted with a host of "social tasks that our mothers should join to tackle."
Kim Jong Un said that the tasks include "bringing up children so that they will steadfastly carry forward our revolution, eliminating the recently-increasing non-socialist practices, promoting family harmony and social unity, establishing a sound way of cultural and moral life, making the communist virtues and traits of helping and leading one another forward prevail over our society, stopping the declining birth rate, and taking good care of children and educating them effectively," as reported by the Independent.
“These belong to our common family affairs, which we need to deal with by joining hands with our mothers,” the Independent quoted him as saying.
According to the United Nations Population Fund, as of 2023 the fertility rate, or the average number of children being born to a woman in North Korea, stood at 1.8, amid an extended fall in the rate during recent decades, reported Reuters.
The fertility rate remains higher than in some of North Korea's neighbours, which have been grappling with a similar downward trend.
North Korea, which has a population of about 25 million people, has in recent decades also had to contend with serious food shortages, including deadly famine in the 1990s, often a result of natural disasters such as floods damaging harvests.