North Korea: President wore winter shoes in summer

On the day that former President Clinton made a surprise visit to North Korea and met with the country's leader, Kim Jong Il, North Korea's official press agency, Korean Central News Agency, later announced that Kim pardoned two American journalists and ordered their release from prison.

The reporters, Euna Lee, 36, and Laura Ling, 32, who both worked for former Vice President Al Gore's Current TV media venture, were arrested for entering North Korea illegally and sentenced to 12 years of hard labor. Since their capture, they've been incarcerated in a guest house.

But on the same day, North Korea  announced to the world that on an August day in 1951, President Kim Il Sung, the father of the current leader and founder of the North Korean regime, "examined cotton-padded military winter-shoes."

In a statement, North Korea said that Kim Il Sung "watched shoes with care from the height of rubber rim to thickness of shoe-sole" and instructed an official to carry a pair of shoes with him while hiking.

North Korea's press agency said that on the next day, "after he came back to the Supreme Command," the President for Life "put on the cotton-padded shoes."

According to the statement "officials dubiously looked at him wearing the shoes unfit for hot summer."

But "after having put on the shoes for a week and more, he told officials that, while wearing the shoes for several days, he felt they were good as they were warm and comfortable for feet. What worries myself, he added, is that feet of soldiers might be frozen as the shoes became wet easily."

With a crowd surrounding him, Kim Il-Sung pointed to the rubber rim of the shoes and said "in an anxious tone that the height of the rim was so low that the shoes got wet like this even in some mud and the wet shoes might make feet of soldiers frozen in winter though cotton was padded."

After hearing the President's explanation, "at last the officials realized why the President wore the shoes in summer."

Kim Il Sung then "earnestly instructed them that the height of rubber should be raised higher."

The officials who were concerned about the President's care for the shoes were "deeply moved by him who worried himself so much about the problem of military winter-shoes in the height of the hard-fought war, not a problem of military operation."