SEOUL: North Korea celebrated a group of sailors as national heroes for sacrificing their lives to protect

portraits of leader Kim Jong Il and his late father even as their ship went down off the Chinese coast last year, state-run media reported today.

The captain and chief engineer of the cargo

ship were named

labour heroes, and posthumously conferred gold medals and the Order of the National Flag First Class, the North’s Korean Central News Agency said in a dispatch from the capital, Pyongyang.

The cargo ship had gone down near the northeastern Chinese city of Dalian on November 17, killing five sailors and leaving 15 others adrift, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency said in a report today. A Chinese crew eventually rescued the North Korean sailors, the report said.

The entire crew was honoured for their bravery, KCNA said.

The report did not say how the sailors managed to protect the portraits, or whether they were salvaged from the sinking ship. “The crew displayed the spirit of defending the headquarters of the revolution, the heroic self-sacrificing spirit and the revolutionary comradeship in rough wind and waves,” KCNA said, referring to saving the portraits of Kim and his father, North Korea founder Kim Il Sung.

Tales of North Koreans going to great lengths to protect the leaders’ portraits are a staple of state propaganda.