By Kim Tong-Hyung, SEOUL
South Korea
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un shared center stage with senior delegates from Russia and China as he rolled out his most powerful nuclear-capable missiles in a military parade in the capital, Pyongyang, marking a major war anniversary with a show of defiance against the United States and deepening ties with Moscow as tensions on the peninsula are at their highest point in years.
State media said Friday Kim
attended Thursday evening’s parade with Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu
and Chinese ruling party official Li Hongzhong from a balcony looking over a
brightly illuminated Kim Il Sung Square, named after Kim’s grandfather, the
founder of North Korea.
The streets and stands were
packed with tens of thousands of mobilized spectators, who roared in approval
as waves of goose-stepping soldiers, tanks and huge, intercontinental ballistic
missiles wheeled out on launcher trucks filled up the main road. In recent
days, according to KCNA reports, people have been brought from the around the
country to fill the crowd.
Photos showed Kim Jong Un
smiling and talking with Shoigu and Li, who respectively stood to his right and
left at the balcony’s center spot, and Kim and Shoigu raising their hands to
salute the parading troops. KCNA did not say whether Kim made a speech.
The North’s official Korean
Central News Agency said the parade featured ceremonial flights of newly
developed surveillance and attack drones, which were first unveiled by state
media this week as they reported on an arms exhibition attended by Kim and
Shoigu.
For a
finale, the parade rolled out new ICBMs that were flight-tested in recent months and
demonstrated ranges that could reach deep into the U.S. mainland, the
Hwasong-17 and Hwasong-18. Some analysts have argued these missiles are based
on Russian designs or know-how.
North Korean Defense Minister
Kang Sun Nam spoke, describing the parade as a historic celebration of the
country’s “great victory” against “U.S. imperialist aggression forces and
groups of its satellite states.”
He condemned the United States
for its expanding military exercises with South Korea, which the North portrays
as invasion rehearsals, and also launching new rounds of nuclear contingency
planning meetings with Seoul. The allies describe their drills as defensive,
and say the upgrades in training and planning are necessary to cope with the
North’s evolving nuclear threat.
“We solemnly declare that if
they attempt military confrontation as now, the exercise of our state’s armed
forces will go beyond the scope of the right to defense for the United States
of America and (South Korea),” Kang said, repeating previous North Korean
threats of nuclear conflict.
“The U.S. imperialists have no room of choice of survival in case they use nuclear weapons against the DPRK,” he said, using the initials of his country’s formal name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
Clouds over Pyongyang in
recent days made it difficult for satellites to monitor preparations for the
parade, which took place at night.
Satellite images showed what
appeared to be a massing of people at the square at 1316 GMT (10:16 p.m. local)
Thursday, said Dave Schmerler, a senior research associate at the James Martin
Center for Nonproliferation Studies, which is part of the Middlebury Institute
of International Studies at Monterey.
North Korea’s invitation of Russian and Chinese delegates was
a rare diplomatic opening since the start of the pandemic. Experts say Kim is
trying to break out of diplomatic isolation and boost the visibility of his
partnership with authoritarian allies to counter pressure from the United
States.
The parade followed meetings between Kim and Shoigu in Pyongyang this week
that demonstrated North Korea’s support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and
added to suspicions the North was willing to supply arms to Russia, whose war
efforts have been compromised by defense procurement and inventory problems.
On Thursday, KCNA published a
letter by Russian President Vladimir Putin, who thanked Kim for North Korea’s
“firm support” of his war efforts in Ukraine. Putin said that interests between
Moscow and Pyongyang were aligning as they counter the “policy of the Western
group which hinders the establishment of the truly multi-polarized and just
world order.”
Kim also held a luncheon and
dinner banquet for Shoigu and his delegation following a second day of talks
about expanding the countries’ “strategic and tactical collaboration and
cooperation” in defense and security, KCNA said.
“Given Russia’s need for
ammunition for its illegal war in Ukraine and Kim Jong Un’s willingness to
personally give the Russian defense minister a tour of North Korea’s arms
exhibition, U.N. member states should increase vigilance for observing and
penalizing sanctions violations,” said Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha
University in Seoul.
He added: “China’s
representation at North Korea’s parading of nuclear-capable missiles raises
serious questions about Beijing enabling Pyongyang’s threats to global
security.”
The parade capped off the
North Korean festivities for the 70th anniversary of the armistice that stopped
fighting in the 1950-53 Korean War. North Korea, which triggered the war with a
surprise attack on the South in June 1950, was supported by Chinese troops and
the then-Soviet air force. South Korea, the United States and troops from other
nations under the aegis of the U.N. fought to push back the invasion.
The July 1953 truce was never
replaced with a peace treaty, leaving the Korean Peninsula in a technical state
of war, but the North still sees it as a victory in the “Grand Fatherland
Liberation War.”
The anniversary events were
more somber in South Korea, where President Yoon Suk Yeol visited a war
cemetery in the city of Busan to honor the foreign troops who died while
fighting for the South during the war.
In the face of growing North
Korean threats, Yoon has pushed to expand South Korea’s military exercises with
Washington and is seeking stronger U.S. reassurances that it would use its
nuclear capabilities to defend the South in the event of a nuclear attack.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio
Guterres also marked the anniversary with a statement expressing concern over
what he described as a growing “nuclear risk” on the Korean Peninsula.
“I urge the parties to resume
regular diplomatic contacts and nurture an environment conducive to dialogue,”
he said.
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