Seoul:North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un shared centre 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. State media said on Friday Kim attended Thursday evening's parade with Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chinese ruling party official Li Hongzhong from a balcony looking over the city's main square. The streets and stands were packed with tens of thousands of mobilised 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.
The North's official Korean Central News Agency said the parade also 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. KCNA did not say whether Kim made a speech during the parade. It did summarise a speech by North Korean Defence Minister Kang Sun Nam, who described the parade as a historic celebration of the country's great victory against the American imperialists and the forces of their follower nations and said the North under Kim's leadership would prosper indefinitely.
Black-and-white synthetic aperture radar imagery from satellites showed what appeared to be a massing of people at Pyongyang's Kim Il Sung Square, named after Kim's state-founding grandfather, 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.
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Clouds over Pyongyang in recent days made it difficult to make out the preparations for the parade, which took place at night. Kim's latest display of his military might come as tensions on the Korean Peninsula are at their highest in years. North Korea has dialled up its weapons tests to a record pace in recent months and the US has responded by strengthening combined military exercises and nuclear contingency planning with South Korea, in a cycle of tit-for-tat that has been punctuated by mutual, verbal threats of destruction.
North Korea's invitation of Russian and Chinese delegates to the parade was a rare opening for the country since the start of the pandemic. Experts say Kim is trying to break out from diplomatic isolation and boost the visibility of his partnership with authoritarian allies to counter pressure from the United States, which has been strengthening its security cooperation with South Korea and Japan to contain the North's nuclear threat.