North Korea defies virus with huge military parade
Seoul, South Korea - Nucleararmed North Korea held a giant military parade on Saturday, television images showed, with thousands of maskless troops defying the coronavirus threat and Pyongyang expected to put on show its latest and most advanced weapons.
The widely anticipated display is part of commemorations of the 75th anniversary of the North’s ruling Workers’ Party.
State broadcaster KCTV showed squadron after squadron of armed soldiers and armoured vehicles lined up in the streets of Pyongyang ready to march through Kim Il Sung Square in a night-time display.
None of the participants or the audience lined up in the stands were wearing masks, but there were far fewer citizens than usual on the square itself.
The programme opened with an image of a propaganda poster for the commemorations, showing three North Koreans holding up its symbols of a hammer, sickle and brush, and the slogan: ‘The biggest glory to our great party.’
North Korean military parades normally climax with whatever missiles Pyongyang wants to highlight and are keenly watched by observers for clues to its weapons development.
According to Seoul's joint chiefs of staff, the display actually took place in the early hours of Saturday, when they said in a statement that ‘signs of a military parade - involving equipment and people on a large scale - were detected at Kim Il Sung Square’.
South Korean and US intelligence agencies were ‘closely tracking the event’, they added.
The ruling party anniversary comes during a difficult year for North Korea as the coronavirus pandemic and recent storms add pressure to the heavily sanctioned country. Pyongyang closed its borders eight months ago to try to protect itself from the virus, which first emerged in neighbouring China, and has yet to confirm a single case.
Last month, troops from the
North shot dead a South Korean fisheries official who had drifted into its waters, apparently as a precaution against the disease, prompting fury in Seoul and a rare apology from North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
The North is widely believed to have continued to develop its arsenal - which it says it needs to protect itself from a US invasion - throughout nuclear negotiations with Washington, deadlocked since the collapse of a summit in Hanoi early last year.
The anniversary of the Workers’ Party means North Korea ‘has a political and strategic need to do something bigger’, said Sung-yoon Lee, a Korean studies professor at Tufts University in the United States.