North Korea: 'Women's movement leader' Kim Jong-un marks International Women's Day by handing out make-up to pilots' wives

State proclaims that 'women in the DPRK have been given preferential treatment'

Spot the women: File photo from KCNA on 5 November 2014 shows North Korean leader Kim Jong-un attending an event with military commanders (EPA)

Kim Jong-un has put himself forward as an unlikely new leader in the movement for gender equality – marking International Women’s Day with a series of public events and speeches.

The North Korean dictator referenced the 8 March celebration observed around the world – but not before he had hailed it as the 20th anniversary of his predecessor Kim Jong-il’s “scientific theory” on the role of women in “pushing ahead with the revolution and construction”.

It was the first in a series of incongruities surrounding the recognition of a day for women’s rights in a country where, according to a panel of female defectors in Seoul on Tuesday, women do not receive sex education, are subjected to forced abortions and in the military are required to perform sexual favours on their higher-ranking men.

The secretive state’s official KCNA news agency reported that a string of the regime’s most senior figures –all male – met with “exemplary women and women officials and members of the women's union” at a cultural centre in Pyongyang.

At a visit to an airbase, Kim Jong-un did not actually meet any women in person but asked commanding officers to pass on gifts of food and cosmetics, according to a state newspaper.

The dictator posed for photos with male pilots, according to Sky News, and told them t remember the regime slogan: “We wait only for the Party's order for missions!”

The report in the Rodong Sinmun paper came as one of a series putting forward North Korea’s feminist credentials while criticising the “discrimination against women workers protested in South Korea”, who KCNA said were unable “to live as human beings”.

KCNA’s main report on the anniversary of “Kim Jong-il’s work and International Women’s Day” said the country had “demonstrated its might as an example of the progressive women's movement of the world under the wise guidance of peerlessly great men”.

“The Korean women's movement greets the heyday of its development as it is led by Marshal Kim Jong Un,” it said, and praised Kim Jong-un as the inventor of “Mother’s Day, the first of its kind in Korean history” – four years ago.