Kim Jong-un visited Primorsky Aquarium and watched performances featuring beluga whales, bottlenose dolphins, fur seals and “Misha” the walrus during a trip to Russia
Kim Jong-un has visited an aquarium previously dubbed a death camp which saw 15 animals die in just three years in Russia.
The North Korean leader is currently on his way home from Russia, ending a six-day trip that triggered global concerns about weapons transfer deals between the two countries locked in separate standoffs with the West.
Kim's armoured train departed to the sound of the Russian patriotic march song "Farewell of Slavianka" at the end of a farewell ceremony at a railway station in Artyom, a far eastern Russian city about 124 miles from the border with North Korea.
Senior officials including Russia's Minister of Natural Resources Alexander Kozlov and Primorye regional Gov. Oleg Kozhemyako were present at the ceremony, which featured a Russian military band playing both North Korean and Russian national anthems.
Since entering Russia last Tuesday in his first overseas trip in more than four years, Kim had met President Vladimir Putin and visited key military and technology sites, underscoring the countries' deepening defense cooperation in the face of separate, intensifying confrontations with the US and its allies.
Earlier on Sunday, Kim watched a walrus show at a Russian aquarium. At Russky Island's Primorsky Aquarium, Russia's largest, Kim watched performances featuring beluga whales, bottlenose dolphins, fur seals and "Misha" the walrus, which he seemed to particularly enjoy.
Primorsky Aquarium was previously dubbed a death camp by charity Dolphin Project back in 2016 with 15 animal deaths in just three years from 2013.
Dolphins, seals and walruses have all died at the aquarium with insiders claiming the facility’s pools didn’t meet the required Ph levels to keep the animals healthy.
The deaths included a walrus named Tora dying after swallowing a rope and fish were killed when the electricity was shut down.
In April 2016, a beluga whale suffocated to death, with officials saying: “She was found this morning. Somehow she opened the grate in the drain hole and stuck there. Of course, she suffocated without air.”
The most infamous death in October that year when 5-month-old sea lion named Stark was beaten to death with a hammer by a mechanic who said he was startled by the animal.
Kim's visit to Russia was his longest foreign travel since he took power in late 2011. Observers said Kim was expected to return to Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, around Monday afternoon.
Foreign officials and experts have said North Korea could provide badly needed munitions for Moscow's war on Ukraine in exchange for sophisticated Russian weapons technology that would advance Kim's nuclear ambitions.
In return for supplying conventional arms to Russia, experts say North Korea would seek Russian economic and food aid but also transfers of technologies to build powerful missiles, a nuclear-propelled submarine and a spy satellite. North Korea has publicly sought to introduce such high-tech weapons systems citing what it called intensifying US-led hostilities.
On Saturday, Kim traveled to an airport near Vladivostok, where Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and other senior military officials gave him an up-close look at Russia's strategic bombers and other warplanes. Kim and Shoigu later in the day went to Vladivostok, where they inspected the Admiral Shaposhnikov frigate.
On Friday, Kim visited an aircraft plant in the city of Komsomolsk-on-Amur that produces Russia's most powerful fighter jets. The Russian warplanes shown to Kim on Saturday were among the types that have seen action in Ukraine, including the Tu-160, Tu-95 and Tu-22 bombers that have regularly launched cruise missiles.
During Kim's visit, Shoigu and Lt. Gen. Sergei Kobylash, the commander of the Russian long-range bomber force, confirmed for the first time that the Tu-160 had recently received new cruise missiles with a range of more than 4,040 miles. Shoigu, who had met Kim during a rare visit to North Korea in July, also showed Kim another of Russia's latest missiles, the hypersonic Kinzhal, carried by the MiG-31 fighter jet, that saw its first combat during the war in Ukraine.
North Korea's state media reported that Kim and Shoigu talked about the regional security environment and exchanged views on "practical issues arising in further strengthening the strategic and tactical coordination, cooperation and mutual exchange between the armed forces of the two countries".
Kim's summit with Putin was held at Russia's main space launch site, a location that pointed to his desire for Russian assistance in his efforts to acquire space-based reconnaissance assets and missile technologies. In recent months, two North Korean launches to send a spy satellite into space ended in failure, and the North vowed to conduct a third attempt in October.
During the meeting with Putin, Kim said his country would offer its "full and unconditional support" for Russia's fight to defend its security interests, in an apparent reference to the war in Ukraine. Kim invited Putin to visit North Korea at "a convenient time," and Putin accepted.
It was Kim's second summit meeting with Putin. The previous meeting took place in Vladivostok in April 2019, two months after Kim's high-stakes nuclear diplomacy with then U.S. President Donald Trump fell apart during their second summit in Vietnam.
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