North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un has opened a science and technology complex in Pyongyang, the North's state media said Saturday, adding another ostentatious building to the impoverished country's showcase capital. His attendance at the ceremony on Friday marked his first public appearance since his New Year address, when he vowed to raise living standards in the struggling one-party Stalinist state.
Inspecting the complex, he said it was "a great centre" open to everybody for study and "for disseminating [the] latest science and technology in which the party's plan has been materialised", Pyongyang's KCNA news agency reported. He said the completion of the complex was testimony to the great importance the Worker's Party of Korea attaches to the development of science and technology. "It is the party's firm determination to ... advance the establishment of a rich and powerful fatherland through the locomotive of science and technology", Kim said in his New Year speech.
The complex is located on a "propitious site" near the Taedong River in the capital, Prime Minister Pak Pong-Ju said during a speech at its opening ceremony. Pyongyang's Korean Central TV broadcast footage of Kim cutting the ribbon to the gleaming structure amid rapturous applause from thousands of participants gathered in front of the building, as balloons floated into the air and a band struck up a tune, "Happy Tomorrow". He was filmed touring the building, which a TV commentator said was modelled on the structure of a nucleus.