April Spring Friendship Art Festival

April 12, 2018

A performance troupe from Japan arrives at the opening of the 'April Spring Friendship Art Festival' outside a theatre in Pyongyang on Wednesday, April 11, 2018.

The week-long event, the 31st of its kind, is part of the annual commemorations of the anniversary of the birth of the North's founder Kim Il Sung, who remains the country's Eternal President despite dying in 1994.

It features concerts, dance performances and acrobatics and is one of the rituals with which North Korean authorities inculcate and reinforce loyalty to the ruling dynasty. AFP-Jiji Press