North Korea’s Kim Jong Un has showed off his country’s banned ballistic missiles to visiting Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu.
Shoigu is in North Korea for celebrations marking the 70th anniversary of the Korean War armistice ⤵️ pic.twitter.com/o2cIQSiS6h
— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) July 28, 2023
Why did Shoigu visit North Korea just now?
Russia, it seems, is getting another military ally. pic.twitter.com/OiWqzLf2cS— Spriter Team (@SpriterTeam) July 27, 2023
Kim Jong Un appears with Russia’s minister of defense Sergei Shoigu and Chinese politburo member Li Hongzhong during North Korea’s ‘Victory Day’ celebrations on Thursday. pic.twitter.com/WwT9387AG6
— NK NEWS (@nknewsorg) July 28, 2023
What with Russia and China becoming the dominant players on the world stage, North Korea can no longer really be classified as a “pariah.”
They are basically now just a normal country, engaged normally with other normal countries, while the United States and its allies are flooding themselves with 75 IQ Somalians and mutilating their homosexual children.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un shared center stage with senior delegates from Russia and China as he rolled out his most powerful nuclear-capable missiles in a military parade in the capital, Pyongyang, marking a major war anniversary with a show of defiance against the United States and deepening ties with Moscow as tensions on the peninsula are at their highest point in years.
State media said Friday Kim attended Thursday evening’s parade with Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chinese ruling party official Li Hongzhong from a balcony looking over a brightly illuminated Kim Il Sung Square, named after Kim’s grandfather, the founder of North Korea.
The streets and stands were packed with tens of thousands of mobilized spectators, who roared in approval as waves of goose-stepping soldiers, tanks and huge, intercontinental ballistic missiles wheeled out on launcher trucks filled up the main road.
In recent days, according to KCNA reports, people have been brought from the around the country to fill the crowd.
Photos showed Kim Jong Un smiling and talking with Shoigu and Li, who respectively stood to his right and left at the balcony’s center spot, and Kim and Shoigu raising their hands to salute the parading troops. KCNA did not say whether Kim made a speech.
The North’s official Korean Central News Agency said the parade featured ceremonial flights of newly developed surveillance and attack drones, which were first unveiled by state media this week as they reported on an arms exhibition attended by Kim and Shoigu.
For a finale, the parade rolled out new ICBMs that were flight-tested in recent months and demonstrated ranges that could reach deep into the US mainland, the Hwasong-17 and Hwasong-18.
Some analysts have argued these missiles are based on Russian designs or know-how.
North Korean Defense Minister Kang Sun Nam spoke, describing the parade as a historic celebration of the country’s “great victory” against “US imperialist aggression forces and groups of its satellite states.”
He condemned the United States for its expanding military exercises with South Korea, which the North portrays as invasion rehearsals, and also launching new rounds of nuclear contingency planning meetings with Seoul.
The allies describe their drills as defensive, and say the upgrades in training and planning are necessary to cope with the North’s evolving nuclear threat.
“We solemnly declare that if they attempt military confrontation as now, the exercise of our state’s armed forces will go beyond the scope of the right to defense for the United States of America and (South Korea),” Kang said, repeating previous North Korean threats of nuclear conflict.
“The US imperialists have no room of choice of survival in case they use nuclear weapons against the DPRK,” he said, using the initials of his country’s formal name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
…
On Thursday, KCNA published a letter by Russian President Vladimir Putin, who thanked Kim for North Korea’s “firm support” of his war efforts in Ukraine.
Putin said that interests between Moscow and Pyongyang were aligning as they counter the “policy of the Western group which hinders the establishment of the truly multi-polarized and just world order.”
Kim also held a luncheon and dinner banquet for Shoigu and his delegation following a second day of talks about expanding the countries’ “strategic and tactical collaboration and cooperation” in defense and security, KCNA said.
North Korea is very cool.
Even though Kim is a bit overweight, he pulls off an incredible aesthetic.
Everyone is just normal and friendly when the sickening American perverts are not around.
Quite frankly, even the French and the Germans would act normal if it were not for the Americans.
One might think this video is from the 70s. But it was actually filmed today as Shoigu arrived to North Korea to “share his experience”.
A huge poster saying “Welcome, comrade defense minister of the Russian Federation!” is visible on the video.
Shoigu officially arrived to… pic.twitter.com/TOuoHW0h2Z
— Anton Gerashchenko (@Gerashchenko_en) July 25, 2023