NORTH KOREA: Thousands of North Korean troops paraded through Pyongyang Sunday as the nuclear-armed country celebrated its 70th birthday, followed by artillery and tanks, but it refrained from displaying the intercontinental ballistic missiles that have seen it hit with sanctions.
Instead leader Kim Jong Un showed off his friendship with China, raising the hand of President Xi Jinping’s envoy as they saluted the crowd together afterwards.
The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, as the North is officially known, was proclaimed on September 9, 1948, three years after Moscow and Washington divided the peninsula between them in the closing days of the Second World War.
Such set-piece dates are a mainstay of the North’s political calendar, particularly when round numbers are involved, and have long been occasions for showing off its latest hardware.
But too militaristic a display might have risked upsetting the recent diplomatic dalliance on the peninsula, after Kim’s Singapore meeting with US President Donald Trump in June and his third summit with the South’s President Moon Jae-in due in Pyongyang later this month. After a 21-gun salute, dozens of infantry units marched through Kim Il Sung Square, some in night-vision goggles or wielding rocket-propelled grenade launchers, as the current leader -- the founder’s grandson -- looked on from a rostrum. Li Zhanshu, one of the seven members of the Chinese Communist party’s Politburo Standing Committee, the country’s most powerful body, sat next to him, the two of them occasionally exchanging comments.
Armoured personnel carriers, multiple rocket launchers and tanks followed, with biplanes flying overhead in a ‘70’ formation. At one point jets trailing red, white and blue smoke -- the colours of the North Korean flag -- roared above the Juche Tower, the stone monument to Kim Il Sung’s political philosophy. Finally came the missiles, the traditional climax of the parades. But the only ones on show were the blue Kumsong-3, an anti-ship cruise missile, and the Pongae-5 surface-to-air weapon.
There was no sign of the Hwasong-14 and -15 missiles that can reach the mainland United States and changed the strategic balance when they were first tested last year.
“It looks like the North Koreans really tried to tone down the military nature of this,” said Chad O’Carroll, managing director of Korea Risk Group.
“There was no display of ICBMs, IRBMs (intermediate-range ballistic missiles), which would really not have sat well with the whole idea that North Korea is committed to ultimate denuclearisation. So I think it will be well received.” Immediately after the parade thousands of citizens walked through the square, escorting floats displaying economic themes and calls for Korean reunification. - AFP
North Korean soldiers march during a parade on the Kim Il-sung Square in Pyongyang, North Korea. - AFP
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