North parade day before ceremony
Seoul, Feb. 6: North Korea’s planned military parade on the eve of the South’s Winter Olympics is a carefully calculated move to use the global spotlight on the peninsula to reassert its military power, analysts say.
Pyongyang last month announced it would commemorate the 70th anniversary of the founding of its military on February 8 — changing the date from April 25 and switching it to the day before the Games’ opening ceremony.
The news provoked consternation in Winter Games host South Korea, coming just days after the unpredictable, nucleararmed North agreed to participate in Pyeongchang following months of cajoling by Seoul to join in a “peace Olympics”.
The latest satellite imagery showed 13,000 troops rehearsing at an training facility on the outskirts of Pyongyang, but with only a few artillery pieces and armoured vehicles.
“The North last year declared itself as a nuclear state,” said Park Won- Gon, international relations professor at Handong Global University.
“They want to ‘ normalise’ its military rise and its status as a de- facto nuclear state by holding the parade and attending the Olympics a day later as if nothing happened and there is nothing wrong about it,” he told AFP.
Such plans are likely to backfire.
The North’s participation in the Games has been hailed by Seoul and the IOC but is seen with suspicion by critics who describe it as an attempt to soften Pyongyang’s image and to eventually ease sanctions on the regime without it giving up its nuclear ambitions.
Washington has said it would “prefer” the parade not take place on Thursday, and US political website Axios quoted an aide to US Vice President Mike Pence — who will attend the Pyeongchang opening ceremony — calling the North’s participation “propaganda”.