North Korean leader rides horse on sacred peak, vows to fight U.S. sanctions

SEOUL — North Korea released a series of photos Wednesday showing leader Kim Jong Un riding a white horse to a sacred mountain he has often climbed before making key decisions. Near the mountain, Kim reportedly vowed to overcome U.S.-led sanctions that he said had both pained and infuriated his people.

The images and Kim’s rhetoric appeared aimed at bolstering his leadership at home as the North tries to pressure the United States into making concessions in nuclear diplomacy.

The photos showed a bespectacled Kim wearing a long, light-brown coat and riding on horseback up snow-covered Mount Paektu. The mountain, the highest point on the Korean Peninsula, is sacred to North Koreans, and both it and the white horse are symbols associated with the Kim family’s dynastic rule.

Kim previously visited Mount Paektu before executing his powerful uncle in 2013 and entering into diplomacy with South Korea and the U.S. in 2018.

South Korean media quickly speculated that Kim may be considering a new strategy in his dealings with the U.S. because he’s previously demanded that Washington come up with new proposals to salvage the stalemated diplomacy by the end of December.

North Korean documents say Kim’s grandfather and national founder Kim Il Sung had an anti-Japan guerrilla base on Paektu’s slopes during Japan’s 1910-45 colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula. The official biography of Kim Jong Un’s father, Kim Jong Il, says the second-generation leader was born on Paektu when a double rainbow filled the skies.

The white horse is also a propaganda symbol for the Kim family, which has ruled North Korea for seven decades with a strong personality cult surrounding family members. State media have occasionally shown Kim, his sister and his father riding white horses. The symbolism goes back to Kim Il Sung who,...