Tens of thousands of North Koreans marched in anti-US rallies on Sunday, pledging “merciless” revenge against “US imperialists,” as the country marked the 73rd anniversary of the start of the Korean War, state media said yesterday.
More than 120,000 people participated in Sunday’s mass rallies in the nation’s capital, North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency said.
While the 1950-1953 conflict was triggered by a North Korean surprise attack, the demonstrators mobilized in Pyongyang promoted their government’s version of events, and accused Washington of provoking the war and leaving Koreans with “wounds ... that can never be healed.”
Photo: EPA-EFE / KCNA
Meanwhile, in South Korea, a North Korean defector-turned-
activist said he flew balloons carrying about 200,000 anti-Pyongyang propaganda leaflets and COVID-19 medical supplies across the border on Sunday night, continuing his yearslong campaigns that have often triggered angry responses from the North.
Photos sent by Park Sang-hak showed a placard with a picture of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and a message that highlighted how his grandfather, Kim Il-sung, was responsible for starting the Korean War.
Photo: AP / Fighters For A Free North Korea
The North has not commented on Park’s latest ballooning stint.
North Korea is extremely sensitive about any outside attempt to undermine Kim’s leadership and weaken his absolute control over the nation’s 26 million people.
At the rallies on Sunday, North Koreans also expressed pride in Kim Jong-un’s expanding nuclear weapons and missile programs, saying their country now has the “strongest absolute weapon to punish the US imperialists and the war deterrence for self-defense which no enemy dare provoke.”
Photographs published by the North’s Rodong Sinmun newspaper showed a stadium packed with likely tens of thousands of people in COVID-19 masks, raising their fists in the air and holding signs that read: “Let’s eradicate US imperialist invaders” and “The entire US mainland is within our striking range.”
The rallies came amid heightened tensions in the region, as the pace of North Korean weapons demonstrations and the US’ joint military exercises with South Korea have both intensified in a cycle of tit-for-tat.
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