North Korean leader Kim Jong Un wipes away tears and appears emotional in a video from a recent event in which he urged women to have more children and called for efforts to combat the country’s falling birth rates. He can be seen in the video, which is going viral on social media, looking down and wiping away tears. Many people in the audience are seen wiping away 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 the news agency Reuters at the event for mothers in Pyongyang on Sunday.
He thanked mothers for their role in strengthening national power
“I too always think about mothers when I have a hard time dealing with the party and the state’s work,” Kim said. The United Nations Population Fund estimates that North Korea’s fertility rate, or the average number of children born to a woman, will be 1.8 in 2023, after a long decline in recent decades.
North Korea’s fertility rate remains higher than that of some of its neighbors, who have been dealing with a similar downward trend.
South Korea’s fertility rate fell to a record low of 0.78 last year, while Japan’s fell to 1.26.
South Korea’s dwindling birth rates have resulted in a shortage of pediatricians, while one city is hosting matchmaking events to increase birth rates.
North Korea, which has a population of about 25 million people, has also faced severe food shortages in recent decades, including a deadly famine in the 1990s, which was often caused by natural disasters such as floods that ruined harvests.