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Kim oversees North Korea display of military strength
Pyongyang, North Korea | AFP | North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un Saturday saluted as ranks of goose-stepping soldiers followed by tanks and other military hardware paraded in Pyongyang for a show of strength with tensions mounting over his nuclear ambitions.
After inspecting an honour guard, Kim, in a black suit, watched the parade pour into Kim Il-Sung Square, accompanied by top military and party leaders, state television showed in a live broadcast.
Led by rows of military bands, columns of troops toting rifles and a troupe of sword-wielding female soldiers marched into the vast square in the heart of the city which was festooned in the national colours of blue, white and red.
“Today’s parade will provide a chance to display our powerful military might,” a male voiceover said on the TV broadcast.
Ostensibly the event is to mark the 105th anniversary of the birth of Kim’s grandfather, the North’s founder Kim Il-Sung -– a date known as the “Day of the Sun” in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the country’s official name.
But it is also intended to send an unmistakable message to Washington about the isolated, nuclear-armed North’s military might.
#DPRK holds military parade to mark 105th birthday of founder Kim Il Sung amid heightened tensions on the #KoreanPeninsula pic.twitter.com/Dlrk3GKoRv
— CGTN (@CGTNOfficial) April 15, 2017
Kim did not address the rally, but his close aide Choe Ryong-Hae gave a defiant speech saying that Pyongyang would react in kind to any provocation — nuclear or otherwise.
“We’re prepared to respond to an all-out war with an all-out war and we are ready to hit back with nuclear attacks of our own style against any nuclear attacks,” Choe said.
Pyongyang is under multiple sets of United Nations sanctions over its atomic and ballistic missile programmes, and has ambitions to build a rocket capable of delivering a warhead to the US mainland -– something US President Donald Trump has vowed “won’t happen”.
North Korea showed off a lot of new missile-related hardware during the parade. This is going to take a while to process. But some thoughts.
— Jeffrey Lewis (@ArmsControlWonk) April 15, 2017
This tracked transporter is new, but the canisters look a lot like those associated with the Kh-35 cruise missile. Compare/contrast. pic.twitter.com/wrV1MmFgWj
— Jeffrey Lewis (@ArmsControlWonk) April 15, 2017
We’ve seen lots of pictures of North Korea’s solid-fueled SLBM before. This is a new system, but in this parade it is old news. pic.twitter.com/qM15zJrjrO
— Jeffrey Lewis (@ArmsControlWonk) April 15, 2017
North Korea’s KN-15, the land-based variant of the SLBM. Its also new as of 2017. pic.twitter.com/mg4aVJYvF9
— Jeffrey Lewis (@ArmsControlWonk) April 15, 2017
The Musudan, aka Hwasong-10, which counts as relatively boring, with its new scary black paint job. pic.twitter.com/IwwFJC2Eu6
— Jeffrey Lewis (@ArmsControlWonk) April 15, 2017
It has carried out five nuclear tests –- two of them last year -– and multiple missile launches, one of which saw three rockets come down in waters provocatively close to Japan last month.
Speculation that it could conduct a sixth blast in the coming days to coincide with the anniversary has reached fever pitch, with specialist US website 38North describing its Punggye-ri test site as “primed and ready” and White House officials saying military options were “already being assessed”.
You see, unlike the Arabs (and their Spring) and many Africans (who have wished a Spring f their own – but won’t achieve it for the simple reason that being too tribalistic and zealots in faiths foreign to them, their divisions cannot spring a Spring); the Orients – Korea, Viet Nam, Kampuchea, China – deeply despise the American (Western predatory lifestyle). It took 2 hydrogen bombs to turn the Japanese toward English suits – the Japanese were predators in their own wrong (right?).
We have two civilised savages in Danald Trump and Kim Jong Un – Trump could even be only semi civilised.
Trump is tailor-made for goofs. It won’t be the first time for the US to lose a humiliating fight in this region that neighbours Viet Nam. Nad maybe the World may take a deep breath at last with relief from this huge-stomached, scavenging bully to our West. For in case of such loss, she will live on – but no longer able to impose her pestilent sickness on us thru coercion!
When I looka at the pictures of Trump and of Un, I keep wondering which is spookier!!!