Seoul puzzled: who dumped 200 Kim Jong-il lapel pins at Incheon airport?

South Korean police found about 200 lapel pins bearing the image of late North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il strewn near the country’s main international airport on Thursday, police officers said.

Police were analysing security cameras to find how the 196 lapel pins ended up in a flower bed of a hotel close to Incheon International Hotel, just west of Seoul, according to a local police officer who requested anonymity saying he wasn’t authorised to speak to media on the matter.

The possession of such lapel pins would be illegal in South Korea, where praising North Korea is punishable by up to seven years in prison. North Korea, for its part, enforces strict, state-organised public reverence of the Kim family, which has ruled the impoverished yet authoritarian country since its foundation in 1948.

All North Koreans must wear lapel pins carrying the images of both Kim Jong-il and his father Kim Il-sung or the images of either of them. Portraits of the two Kims hang in public buildings and homes, and their birthdays are the two most important holidays in North Korea.

South Korean officials said they haven’t received any reports that North Korea has produced a lapel pin for current leader Kim Jong-un, who took power after his father Kim Jong-il’s death in late 2011.