Pyongyang school girls holding brooms bow to pay their respects toward a mural which shows the late North Korean leader Kim Il Sung delivering a speech, before sweeping the area surrounding this mural.

Cult of personality of Kim Il Sung, a 'national hero' and 'popular guerilla leader', emerged in the DPRK in 1946 — when Pyongyang university was named in his honour and his portraits were hung out for holidays along with the portraits of Marx, Lenin and Stalin. In 1997, three years after Kim Il Sung's death, the DPRK adopted Juche calendar, according to which the chronology begins from Kim Il Sung (it is now the year 103 in the DPRK).