North Korean leader Kim Jong Un visited a Pyongyang cemetery to pay tribute to late military official Hyon Chol Hae for the third consecutive year on Sunday, kneeling before his former mentor’s grave in a continuation of unprecedented state veneration for someone not from the Kim family.

State media reported that Kim laid a flower at Hyon’s grave at the Patriotic Martyrs Cemetery and observed a moment of silence in tribute to what he described as a lifelong revolutionary and loyal servant of the country. 

Recalling Hyon as “a shadow of the great General,” Kim praised his late mentor’s political