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North Korea on Friday announced that South Korea sent flowers to celebrate the 65th birthday of leader Kim Jong-il. The state-run Korean Central Broadcasting Station reported two days later that the flowers sent by South Koreans had been displayed at the 11th Kimjongilia exhibition.
According to an official in the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland, the flowers are ¡°the immortal Kimjongilia that South Koreans have grown with care and sent to the exhibition center.¡± He said that despite a difficult situation, people from all walks of life in the South studied methods of cultivation and ecological characteristics of the plants to grow them and send them to the exhibition. The alleged South Korean flowers were displayed in the shape of the Korean Peninsula. He did not specify which organizations or individuals sent them.
Hong Kwan-hee, the director of South Korea¡¯s Institute for Security and Strategy, says the story is propaganda to show North Korea¡¯s superiority and to destabilize South Korea. Kimjongilia are perennials of the begonia family and were shown for the first time in 1988, when a Japanese horticulturist gave them to Kim Jong-il on his 46th birthday.
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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