North Korea’s main newspaper on Monday carried intensive coverage of the country’s better-than-expected performance at the recent Asiad in South Korea, but it kept mum on Pyongyang’s dispatch of a high-powered delegation to the closing ceremony.

North Korea won 11 gold, 11 silver and 14 bronze medals, placing seventh in the medal rankings at the Incheon Asian Games, which ended its 16-day run on Saturday in the port city of the same name west of Seoul.

It was the communist country’s first finish in the top 10 since it finished ninth in the 2002 Busan Asian Games, also held in South Korea.

The Rodong Sinmun, an organ of the North’s ruling party, filled the front three pages of its Monday issue with stories about North Korean athletes returning from the Incheon Asian Games, especially those who won gold medals.

Photos of gold medal winners ― including the North Korean national women’s football team and weightlifters Kim Un-guk and Om Yun-chol ― filled the mainstream newspaper’s front page as the daily celebrated its delegation’s triumphant return home from the games.

Also covered in the daily were a press conference with the North Korean athletes and leader Kim Jong-un’s morale-boosting meeting with the national women’s football team in August.

Kim’s personal cheering for the women’s team has been “the sign of the victory and the main source of their iron-will mental power,” the newspaper noted in an article.

“The women’s football team defeated all their enemies to claim the victorious top spot and new world and Asian records were set in the weightlifting section,” Kim Pyong-sik, vice minister of the country’s sports department, was quoted as saying in a news conference.

The newspaper also carried details of a street parade for the athletes’ team carried out after returning from the Asiad.

Little was said, however, about the surprise visit to the closing ceremony of the Asian Games by ranking North Korean officials on Saturday. (Yonhap)