Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
N. Korea spotlights economy
Top missiles absent from celebrations
PYONGYANG, North Korea — North Korea held a major military parade and revived its famed mass games to celebrate its 70th anniversary Sunday. But in keeping with leader Kim Jong Un’s new policies, the emphasis was firmly on building up the economy, not on nuclear weapons.
The North rolled out some of its latest tanks and marched its best-trained units in the parade but held back its most advanced missiles and devoted nearly half of the event to civilian efforts to build the domestic economy.
It also brought the mass games back after a fiveyear hiatus. The games are a grand spectacle featuring nearly 20,000 people flipping placards in unison to create huge mosaics as thousands more perform gymnastics or dance in formation on the competition area of Pyongyang’s 150,000-seat May Day Stadium.
The strong emphasis on the economy underscores the strategy Kim has pursued since January of putting economic development front and center.
Tens of thousands of North Koreans waving brightly colored plastic bouquets filled Pyongyang’s Kim Il Sung Square as the parade began. Residents of Pyongyang, North Korea’s capital, trained for months for the anniversary and held up the bouquets to spell out words and slogans that could be seen from the VIP viewing area.
Kim attended the morning parade but did not address the assembled crowd, which included the head of the Chinese parliament and high-level delegations from countries that have friendly ties with the North.
At the end of the two-hour event, Kim strolled to the edge of the balcony with the Chinese special envoy, Li Zhanshu, the third-ranking member in China’s ruling Communist Party. The two held up their joined hands to symbolize the countries’ traditionally close ties.
There had been speculation that Chinese President Xi Jinping might make his first trip to Pyongyang for the parade, but in the end he sent Li, the head of the National People’s Congress.
Li stood at Kim’s right during the parade, underlining the marked improvement in relations between the neighbors this year, with Kim traveling to China three times to meet Xi.
China’s president also sent a message expressing “the unshakable policy of the Chinese party and government to successfully defend, cement and develop the bilateral relations” between the two nations, according to the state-run Korean Central News Agency.
Kim Yong Nam, the head of North Korea’s parliament, set the relatively softer tone for the parade with an opening speech that emphasized the economic goals of the regime, not its nuclear might. He called on the military to be ready to work to help build the economy.
After a truncated parade featuring tanks and some of North Korea’s biggest artillery, fewer than the usual number of missiles and lots of goose-stepping units from all branches of the military, the focus switched to civilian groups including nurses, students and construction workers, many with colorful floats beside them.
The combining of military and civilian sections is a familiar North Korean parade format.
The past two big anniversaries of North Korea’s founding, in 2008 and 2013, did not feature the Korean People’s Army, only the civil-defense units, which are officially called “Worker Peasant Red Guards.”
EASING TENSIONS
Although North Korea stages military parades almost every year, and held one just before the Olympics began in South Korea in February, Sunday’s parade came at a particularly sensitive time.
Kim’s effort to ease tensions with the U.S. has stalled since he and President Donald Trump held a June summit in Singapore. Both sides are now insisting on a different starting point. Washington wants Kim to commit to denuclearization first, but Pyongyang wants its security guaranteed and a peace agreement formally ending the Korean War.
With tensions once again on the rise, a parade featuring the very missiles that so angered Trump last year, and led to a dangerous volley of insults from both leaders, could have been seen as a deliberate provocation. The North also refrained from immediately televising the event, though North Korean media were out in force to film it, deploying booms and — for possibly the first time — drones with cameras.
The North did show off a battery of big artillery pieces, known as self-propelled guns, that could be used to threaten Seoul, South Korea’s capital. But the only types of missiles displayed were short-range surface-to-surface missiles, a surface-to-air missile and an anti-ship cruise missile.
That’s a big departure from February’s parade, when it displayed its Hwasong-15 intercontinental ballistic missile, believed capable of reaching the U.S., and a number of other formidable missiles and the erector-launchers used to fire them from remote locations.
On his Twitter account Sunday, Trump applauded the lack of intercontinental ballistic missiles.
“This is a big and very positive statement from North Korea,” Trump tweeted. “Thank you To Chairman Kim. We will both prove everyone wrong! There is nothing like good dialogue from two people that like each other! Much better than before I took office.”
In April 2017, as tensions with Trump were escalating, Kim paraded a series of missile canisters through Kim Il Sung Square and foreshadowed his later test of a rocket believed to be capable of reaching the U.S. A February event, which came during the first diplomatic breakthroughs between the two sides, was much smaller and displayed no obvious new threats to the U.S.
The absence of nuclear-capable missile systems was seen as a conciliatory gesture during a period of diplomatic outreach and negotiation.
“That choice alone suggests Kim’s intention to underline the seriousness of his ‘new strategic line,’ announced earlier this year, that privileges the country’s economic betterment after the ‘completion’ of the country’s nuclear deterrent last year,” said Ankit Panda, a strategic expert and adjunct senior fellow in the Defense Posture Project at the Federation of American Scientists.
“It also suggests that as long as negotiations are on, North Korea’s nuclear-capable systems will maintain a low profile.”
Grace Liu, a research associate at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey, Calif., said the low-key parade appeared to be aimed at maintaining a “relatively civil dialogue” with Seoul and Washington.
“Overall, a scaled-down ‘non-escalatory’ parade assumes that they’re sticking with the plan to maintain talks with the United States and Republic of Korea,” she said. “Although trying to take the spotlight off of their nuclear program might mean that they’re confident that their nuclear capabilities are fulfilling their purpose of getting R.O.K./U.S. at the table.”
Soon after the anniversary celebrations end, Kim will meet in Pyongyang with South Korean President Moon Jae-in to discuss ways to break the impasse over North Korea’s nuclear weapons.
The U.S.’ newly appointed special representative for North Korea, former Ford Motor Co. executive Steve Biegun, is also due in the region today.
The two sides are struggling to implement a document signed by Trump and Kim in June at the first summit between sitting U.S. and North Korean leaders. The two pledged to “work toward complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula” without setting a timetable or explaining what that means.
Analysts closely watched for pronouncements by Kim that could suggest a new challenge to the U.S. or a willingness to compromise.
The “new line” of putting economic development first has been Kim’s top priority this year. He claims to have refined his nuclear arsenal enough to deter U.S. aggression and devote his resources to raising his nation’s standard of living.
The economic theme was also prominent in the new mass-games routine, which was markedly lighter in tone and more focused on entertainment than in previous years, when it tended to be more dramatic and overtly political.
The mass games, dubbed “Shining Fatherland,” featured everything from a display of drones flying in formation to fireworks, lasers, circus-style performances and at one point hundreds of martial artists doing tae kwon do. A running commentary throughout the show pointed out the importance of following Kim’s economic and development strategy, while significantly playing down the role of the military and not once mentioning North Korea’s nuclear weapons.
The mass-games performances are expected to continue for the next month or so.