North Koreans pay tribute to Kim Jong-un's father

Thousands of North Koreans lined up in bitter cold minus 8C temperatures to pay their respects to late leader Kim Jong-il on the 77th anniversary of his birth. 

Kim, the son of North Korea's founder Kim Il-sung and the father of its current leader Kim Jong-un, was born on February 16 - a day now known as the Day of the Shining Star.

According his official biography, Kim was born in a snow-covered hut at a secret camp on the slopes of Mount Paektu, the spiritual birthplace of the Korean people, where his father was fighting Japanese forces in 1942.

But outside historians point instead to official Soviet records, which say he was born a year earlier in a Siberian village where Kim Il-sung was in exile. 

The Day of the Shining Star celebrates the anniversary of his birth on February 16 with elaborate ice skating displays, flower shows, and tributes in state media.  

Kim Chol Jun, 42, took his two sons to Mansu Hill in Pyongyang, where giant statues of the two older Kims look out over the capital, to pay his respects.

'No sons and daughters feel tired when they visit their parents,' he said. 

'The great leaders are regarded as our own parents, so I visit here to bow before our parents with my sons.' 

Snow dusted two monumental panels - one to the fight against Japanese occupiers, the other to the building of socialism - that flank the statues, their faces bathed in the light of the rising sun as small children swept the steps clean.

In pride of place before the bronze effigies stood a large floral tribute emblazoned with the name of Kim Jong-un, who is due to hold his second summit with US President Donald Trump at the end of the month.

Pyongyang is under multiple international sanctions over its pursuit of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, which Washington is pressing it to give up. North Korea has rejected demands for what it calls a 'unilateral' disarmament.

Turn by turn, groups ranging from couples and families to hundreds-strong detachments of workers or soldiers assembled in front of the statues.