video transcript

ROUGH CUT (NO REPORTER NARRATION) STORY: North Korea's state-run television KRT on Tuesday released still photographs showing leader Kim Jong-un enjoying a New Year's concert with his wife Ri Sol-ju in Pyongyang. KRT said Kim and Ri welcomed the New Year at midnight with guests including foreign ambassadors. They then attended a concert entitled "Following the Party to the End" by Moranbong Band. To celebrate the New Year, people across the reclusive nation offered flowers to statues of former leaders Kim Jong-il and Kim Il-sung. Earlier in the day, KRT showed a rare New Year's message by Kim in which he called for an end to confrontation between the two Koreas. The two countries are technically still at war in the absence of a peace treaty to end their 1950-53 conflict. Kim's address appeared to take the place of the policy-setting New Year's editorial published in leading state newspapers. The New Year address was the first in 19 years by a North Korean leader after the death of Kim Il-sung, Kim Jong-un's grandfather. Kim's father Kim Jong-il rarely spoke in public and disclosed his national policy agenda in editorials in state newspapers. Kim Jong-un came to power in the North after his father Kim Jong-il died in 2011.