SEOUL (AFP) – North Korea marked its founding anniversary with a parade attended by leader Kim Jong Un as well as Russian diplomats and a high-ranking Chinese delegation, state media said yesterday, as Pyongyang deepens ties with Moscow and Beijing.
The Friday event featured Pyongyang’s “paramilitary forces”, state media said, rather than soldiers in the regular army, and it did not showcase the country’s banned weaponry including intercontinental ballistic missiles.
Images in state media showed uniformed paramilitary brigades, including some riding tractors or in large red trucks.
Kim, flanked by his young daughter, looked on smiling and clapping.
Kim Il Sung Square “was full of excitement and joy of the spectators significantly celebrating the birthday of their great powerful country”, the official Korean Central News Agency reported.
“All the participants paid the highest glory and warmest thanks to Kim Jong Un, peerless patriot and ever-victorious iron-willed commander.”
Kim met with the visiting Chinese delegation led by vice-premier of the State Council Liu Guozhong, the second such visit by top officials from Beijing in six weeks, as Pyongyang shows signs of easing its strict COVID-era border controls.
The two sides announced their aims of “further intensifying the multi-faceted coordination and cooperation” between the two countries, according to a separate KCNA report.
Russian diplomats also attended the event, as well as a Russian military song-and-dance ensemble which had arrived in Pyongyang to mark the occasion, KCNA reported.
Moscow expanded its official presence in North Korea shortly before the parade, with its Pyongyang embassy saying this week that it had been allowed to bring in 20 diplomatic and technical staff – the first such rotation of personnel since 2019.
Russian President Vladimir Putin sent Kim a message marking the anniversary, KCNA said yesterday, in which he called for the two countries to “expand the bilateral ties in all respects”.
And according to Chinese state media, President Xi Jinping “extended congratulations in a call to Kim Jong Un” on the anniversary. “For the North Koreans, it’s another confirmation that they can completely count on the Chinese support and a nice confirmation that Russia basically has no choice but to be supportive of North Korea,” analyst Andrei Lankov said.
Friday’s event was the nuclear-armed state’s third parade this year.
The last one – a military parade featuring the country’s most advanced weaponry – took place in late July to commemorate the signing of an armistice that ended hostilities in the 1950-53 Korean War.
