The one certainty in unpredictable North Korea was that if the state detonated a nuclear device or former leader Kim Jong-il visited a duck farm, Ri Chun-hee would have been on TV boasting about the amazing accomplishment.
The grandmother re-emerged on national TV Wednesday to enthusiastically announce the claimed H-bomb test today which shook areas in China bordering North Korea with a 5.1 magnitude earthquake.
Ri had been in retirement after an illustrious career on the hermit kingdom’s only television channel.
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She was the forceful grandmother speaking with the authority of the state as the main newscaster for North Korea’s only TV channel.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un at a multiple-rocket launching drill of the women's sub-units of the Korean People’s Army. Photo: KCNA
Her face was one of the few broadcast abroad and her stentorian reports thunder across airwaves in a land where the Dear Leader rarely spoke.
Ri, born in 1943, is an actress turned newscaster who first took to the air in 1971 when the North’s state TV channel was taking off.
WATCH: Ri Chun-hee comes out of retirement to deliver news about NK’s H-bomb test
