No longrange missiles at N Korea military parade
Trump appreciates Kim’s gesture, calls it ‘positive statement’
PYONGYANG: Thousands of North Korean troops followed by artillery and tanks paraded through Pyongyang on Sunday as the country celebrated its 70th birthday, but it refrained from displaying the intercontinental ballistic missiles that have seen it hit with sanctions.
The missiles’ conspicuous absence drew praise from US President Donald Trump who called it “a big and very positive statement from North Korea.” “Thank you To Chairman Kim. We will both prove everyone wrong!” Trump tweeted. “There is nothing like good dialogue from two people that like each other! Much better than before I took office.”
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un also used the parade to show off his friendship with China, raising the hand of President Xi Jinping’s envoy as they saluted the crowd together afterwards.
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.
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 World War 2.
Such set-piece dates are a mainstay of the North’s political calendar, and have for years been opportunities to demonstrate progress in its quest for a missile capable of delivering a nuclear warhead to the United States.
But too militaristic a display this time might have risked upsetting the recent diplomatic dalliance on the peninsula, after Kim’s Singapore meeting with Trump in June and his third summit with the South’s President Moon Jae-in due later this month.
“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.
Any display of longer-range missiles would have cast doubt on North Korea’s commitment to denuclearisation, he added.
Pyongyang has not publicly stated a willingness to give up the weapons it has spent decades developing at huge political and financial cost, but it has been on a diplomatic charm offensive for months.
In a speech on Sunday, ceremonial president Kim Yong Nam lauded the country and its army as “the strongest in the world”, but did not mention nuclear weapons. And immediately after the parade thousands of citizens rallied through the square, alongside floats displaying economic themes and calls for Korean reunification.