North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, to mark the 75th anniversary of the Worker’s Party of Korea, held a huge military parade to show off its nuclear arsenal. The grand show of arsenal is bound to present a daunting security challenge to the person who would be elected America’s president next.
The unusual parade, which was held pre-dawn at Pyongyang, showcased some of its newer intercontinental ballistic missiles with solid-fuel technology. North Korea hasn’t fired off an ICBM since November 2017. Last year, it conducted a long-burn test of a new engine and debuted an assortment of shorter-range, solid-fuelled rockets.
The parade included a display of transporter erector launchers or TELs, which are mobile launchpads that can be hidden in caves and under bridges and deployed quickly in an attack. Besides newer short-range missiles, also on display were new missiles designed to be launched from a submarine, making Jong-Un’s fleet a credible nuclear threat.
At the parade which was intended to reaffirm support for the Kim regime, the leader praised the military’s efforts to curb the spread of the coronavirus.
State broadcaster KCTV showed squadrons 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.
