Officials from North Korea’s rubber-stamp Supreme People’s Assembly (SPA) began an expedition to revolutionary battle sites at the country’s politically-symbolic Mount Paektu over the weekend, party daily the Rodong Sinmun reported Monday, paying tribute to similar visits by leader Kim Jong Un last year.

Amid broader steps by the country to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus, state media showed officials wearing what appeared to be blue-colored surgical masks climbing the snowy mountain, which holds deep ideological significance in North Korean lore.

Deputies and officials from the SPA’s presidium “started an expedition to revolutionary battle sites in the area of Mt Paektu with due meeting held at the plaza before the statue of Chairman Kim Jong Il in Samjiyon City on Sunday,” state media reported.

At that meeting, SPA Secretary-General Jong Yong Guk delivered a speech emphasizing the “historic” expedition to Mount Paektu by Kim Jong Un last December as “an epoch-making opportunity that armed the whole people with the revolutionary spirit of Paektu.”

The officials’ journey to Paektu mountain, Jong said, must be carried out with “revolutionary vigor” for the “daring head-on breakthrough battle” — a new policy line initiated during a key ruling party plenum late last year.

Apart from Jong, Monday’s coverage in the Rodong did not provide details on which other high-level officials were present at the meeting.

After Sunday’s meeting in Samjiyon, the SPA deputies then departed for the Rimyongsu Revolutionary Site and the Chongbong and Konchang camps, touring sites paying tribute to North Korean founding President Kim Il Sung’s past “revolutionary exploits” during Korea’s war of independence against Japanese rule.

Officials from the SPA Presidium — North Korea’s top legislative body — also visited the Mupho camp, Taehongdan Revolutionary Battle Site, and Sinsadong Revolutionary Battle Site, the Rodong said, adding that they held a campfire meeting and shared their “impressions of the reminiscences of anti-Japanese guerillas.”

The officials’ tour of the revolutionary sites is part of a broader nationwide Mount Paektu-themed propaganda push in the country, following Kim Jong Un’s horseback visits to the site in October and December last year.

Officials from the Korean People’s Internal Security Forces (KPISF), as well as from the country’s youth league and schoolchildren have also been reported to have scaled the mountain in recent weeks.

The Rodong on February 13 claimed that “nearly 50,000 officials, working people, service personnel and school youth and children have toured the revolutionary battle sites in the area of Mt Paektu since last December.”

Edited by Oliver Hotham