Korean leader Kim Jong Un and his wife attended a Lunar New Year’s Day concert in Pyongyang where he received thunderous cheers from audience members and artists who praised him for heralding a “new era” of national power, state media reported.
Footage from state TV showed Kim and Ri smiling and talking at the theater while sitting near Kim Kyong Hui, the leader’s aunt who was making her first public appearance in two years.
Kim Kyong Hui’s fate had been in doubt after Kim Jong Un had her husband and the North’s then-No. 2 official, Jang Song Thaek, executed for treason and corruption in 2013.
Rumors that she had been purged or executed by her nephew circulated for years before she was seen – also at a Lunar New Year’s concert – with Kim Jong Un in 2020.