North Korea marked its founding anniversary with a parade attended by leader Kim Jong-un as well as Russian diplomats and a high-ranking Chinese delegation, state media said yesterday, as Pyongyang deepens ties with Moscow and Beijing.
The Friday event featured Pyongyang’s “paramilitary forces,” state media said, rather than soldiers in the regular army, and it did not showcase the country’s banned weaponry including intercontinental ballistic missiles.
Images in state media showed uniformed paramilitary brigades, including some riding tractors or in large red trucks.
Photo: AFP
Kim, flanked by his young daughter, looked on smiling and clapping.
Kim Il Sung Square “was full of excitement and joy of the spectators significantly celebrating the birthday of their great powerful country,” the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported.
“All the participants paid the highest glory and warmest thanks to Kim Jong Un, peerless patriot and ever-victorious iron-willed commander,” it said.
Kim met with the visiting Chinese delegation led by Chinese State Council Vice Premier Liu Guozhong (劉國中), the second such visit by top officials from Beijing in six weeks, as Pyongyang shows signs of easing its strict COVID-19-era border controls.
The two sides announced their aims of “further intensifying the multifaceted coordination and cooperation” between the two countries, according to a separate KCNA report.
Russian diplomats also attended the event, as well as a Russian military song-and-dance ensemble which had arrived in Pyongyang to mark the occasion, KCNA reported.
Moscow expanded its official presence in North Korea shortly before the parade, with its Pyongyang embassy saying this week that it had been allowed to bring in 20 diplomatic and technical staff — the first such rotation of personnel since 2019.
Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday congratulated Kim on the anniversary, in a message quoted by the Kremlin.
“I am convinced that thanks to our joint efforts we will continue to strengthen ... bilateral ties on all fronts”, Putin said.
“This fully corresponds to the interests of our people” and helps to ensure “the security and stability on the Korean Peninsula and northeast Asia,” he said.
Chinese state media said that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) “extended congratulations in a call to Kim Jong-un.”
“For the North Koreans, it’s another confirmation that they can completely count on the Chinese support and a nice confirmation that, [since] the war in Ukraine, Russia basically has no choice but to be supportive of North Korea,” analyst Andrei Lankov said.
The Chinese and Russian visits come as speculation mounts that Kim — who rarely leaves his country and has not traveled since the COVID-19 pandemic started — would meet Putin to discuss arms deals.
US and other officials told the New York Times that Kim is likely to head by armored train later this month to Vladivostok, on Russia’s Pacific coast not far from North Korea, to meet Putin.
Lankov said that a Kim-Putin meeting is “likely to happen” as, for Moscow, “with a bit of diplomacy, North Korea can be used as a tool to influence behavior of the United States, South Korea” and other places over the Ukraine war.
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