Mourners fill snowy streets of Pyongyang for Kim Jong Il's funeral

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Source: CNN International (Jethro Mullen)

The funeral of the North Korean leader Kim Jong Il unfolded across the snow-laden streets of Pyongyang on Wednesday, a three-hour event that displayed the secretive regime's ability to choreograph elaborate state ceremonies.

A North Korean state television broadcast of the services showed a tearful Kim Jong Un, the son and chosen successor of Kim Jong Il, trudging through the snow alongside the procession as it began at the Kumsusan Memorial Palace, where Kim Jong Il's body had been lying in state since his death earlier this month.

One black car carried on its roof a coffin draped in the flag of the nation's Worker's Party. Another transported a giant portrait of a smiling Kim. <snip>

"The feathery snowfall reminds the Korean people of the snowy day when the leader was born in the secret camp of Mt. Paektu and of the great revolutionary career that he followed through snowdrifts," the Korean Central News Agency said in a report Wednesday, referring to a mythical tale of Kim Jong Il's birth on a sacred mountain.


Read more: http://edition.cnn.com/2011/12/28/world/asia/north-korea-leader-funeral/index.html?hpt=hp_t1