As thousands of soldiers mass at Kim Il-sung square, Pyongyang tells US to end its dangerous ‘military hysteria’
Missiles are paraded in Pyongyang on Saturday as part of celebrations marking the birth of founder Kim Il-sung on Saturday. Photograph: AP
Justin McCurry in Tokyo and Tom Phillips in Beijing
North Korea has held a vast military parade to celebrate the birth of its founding father, Kim Il-sung, and warned that it was prepared to take the “toughest” action unless the US ended its “military hysteria”, as speculation grows that the regime is preparing to conduct a nuclear test.
On a sunny Saturday morning in the capital, Pyongyang, military vehicles and tens of thousands of soldiers filled Kim Il-sung square as a band played rousing military music, the instruments falling silent for oaths of loyalty to the country’s leader, Kim Jong-un.
Experts said the array of military hardware included what appeared to be a new intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) being carried along the streets on a huge truck.
Yonhap quoted South Korean military officials as saying they had not seen the missile before and that it appeared to be a new type of ICBM.
North Korean state television showed what appeared to be several KN-08 and KN-14 missiles. Although they have yet to be tested, analysts say the missiles could one day be capable of hitting targets as far away as the continental United States.
Tanks line up for the parade on Saturday. Photograph: AP
Also on show for the first time were Pukkuksong submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBM), which have a range of over 1,000km (600 miles).
Experts said the display of multiple SLBMs indicated that North Korea was closer to being able to launch submarine-based missiles, which are harder to detect. “It suggests a commitment to this programme,” said Joshua Pollack, editor of the Washington-based Nonproliferation Review. “Multiple SLBMs seems like a declaration of intent to advance the programme”.
A senior North Korean official used the parade to accuse the US of “creating a war situation” with the recent dispatch of warships to the region.
“We will respond to an all-out war with an all-out war and a nuclear war with our style of a nuclear attack,” Choe Ryong-hae, who is rumoured to be the second-most powerful politician in North Korea, said during the parade.
Kim, dressed in a black suit and white shirt, and flanked by senior military and Workers’ party officials, applauded and occasionally smiled as he watched the tributes to his grandfather, who was born 105 years ago today.
China urges North Korea and US to step back from brink of war
But the so-called Day of the Sun was clouded in uncertainty as the world waited to see if Kim Jong-un, the country’s third-generation ruler, would provoke a potential regional crisis with what would be North Korea’s sixth nuclear test in just over a decade, or a test launch of an ICBM.
As the USS aircraft carrier Carl Vinson and its strike group sailed towards the peninsula in a show of force, North Korea’s official KCNA news agency, citing a spokesman for the General Staff of the Korean People’s Army, warned of “merciless” retaliation against any US provocation.
Donald Trump’s decision to send an “armada” of warships to waters off the tense peninsula, coupled with recent US strikes in Syria and Afghanistan, were proof that Washington had chosen the path of “open threat and blackmail”, KCNA said.
North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un salutes during the parade. Photograph: AP
“Our toughest counteraction against the US and its vassal forces will be taken in such a merciless manner as not to allow the aggressors to survive,” it added.
It said the Trump administration’s “serious military hysteria” has reached a “dangerous phase that can no longer be overlooked”.
It added: “Under the prevailing grave situation, the United States has to come to its senses and make a proper option for the solution of the problem.”
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As the parade unfolded in Pyongyang, China’s state-run media warned that the US president was mistaken if he believed that piling military pressure on North Korea would resolve the regime’s nuclear and ballistic missile programmes.
The Global Times said Trump’s decision to drop the “mother of all bombs” on Afghanistan was clearly “a new gimmick in US military deterrence” designed to intimidate Kim Jong-un.
“North Korea must have felt the shock wave travelling all the way from Afghanistan,” the Communist party-controlled newspaper said in an editorial.
However, the Global Times, which sometimes reflects government views, said the use of such a “vicious weapon” was in fact likely to make Pyongyang even more determined to upgrade its own arsenal. “[Trump] has demonstrated a certain level of obsession and pride toward US military prowess,” it said, adding, that the US president “may go down in history as the ‘war president’”.
As North Korea’s only ally and biggest trading partner, China has come under unprecedented pressure in recent days to use its influence to persuade Kim not to risk conflict with a nuclear test or ballistic missile launch.
On Friday, China again called for talks to defuse the crisis. “We call on all parties to refrain from provoking and threatening each other, whether in words or actions, and not let the situation get to an irreversible and unmanageable stage,” the Chinese foreign minister, Wang Yi, told reporters in Beijing.
Speaking to Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, on Friday night, Wang said steps were needed to prevent “war and chaos” on the Korean peninsula.
US officials have said the policy of “strategic patience” pursued by the Obama administration has ended, after years of diplomatic pressure and international sanctions failed to slow North Korea’s progress towards developing nuclear missiles capable of striking the US mainland – a milestone some experts believe is only years away.
In echoes of the bellicose rhetoric that reverberated around the Korean peninsula during its last major crisis in the spring of 2013, KCNA said North Korea would respond in kind to any perceived US military provocation.
Referring to the country by its official title, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, it warned: “The army and people of the DPRK will as ever courageously counter those who encroach upon the dignity and sovereignty of the DPRK and will always mercilessly ravage all provocative options of the US with Korean-style toughest counteraction.”
Agencies contributed to this report
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