North Korea shows off ‘most powerful’ missile at military parade

A new intercontinental ballistic missile was part of a military parade to celebrate the 80th founding anniversary of the Workers' Party of Korea in Pyongyang. Photo / KCNA via KNS / AFP

North Korea showed off its “most powerful” intercontinental ballistic missile at a military parade attended by top officials from Russia and China, Pyongyang’s state media reported Saturday.

The event to mark 80 years under the ruling Workers’ Party came as leader Kim Jong Un has been emboldened by the war in Ukraine, securing critical support from Russia after sending thousands of North Korean troops to fight alongside Moscow’s forces.

Dmitry Medvedev, deputy head of Russia’s Security Council and a close ally of President Vladimir Putin, attended the parade Friday alongside Chinese Premier Li Qiang and Vietnam’s leader To Lam – all seated near Kim, according to images released by the official Korean Central News Agency.

The new intercontinental ballistic missile has been described as North Korea's “most powerful nuclear strategic weapon system”. Photo / KCNA VIA KNS / AFP

The spectacle featured some of the country’s most advanced weapons, including its new Hwasong-20 intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), which KCNA described as its “most powerful nuclear strategic weapon system”.

Thousands of people in colourful traditional dress filled the streets of the North Korean capital for the late-night event, the images showed, waving national flags and cheering as weapons rumbled down the main streets.

Among the featured weapons, long-range strategic cruise missiles, drone launch vehicles, and ground-to-air and ground-to-ground missiles paraded one after another, KCNA said.

The country’s “invincible” army “has always added doubled strength to our party’s efforts to overcome difficulties and bring earlier a bright future”, Kim said in a speech.

He made an apparent nod to North Korean troops fighting alongside Moscow’s forces in Russia’s war against Ukraine.

“The heroic fighting spirit displayed, and the victory achieved, by our revolutionary armed forces on the foreign battlefields for international justice ... demonstrated the ideological and spiritual perfection,” he said, according to KCNA.

Around 600 North Korean soldiers have been killed and thousands more wounded fighting for Russia, Seoul has said.

Structural shift

The parade displayed the isolated, nuclear-armed country’s “inexhaustible defence technology potential and its astonishing pace of development that the world can no longer ignore”, KCNA said.

The celebrations in Pyongyang come after Seoul said a meeting between North Korea and the United States “cannot be ruled out” on the sidelines of this year’s Apec summit in South Korea.

US President Donald Trump met Kim three times during his first term and once said the pair had fallen “in love”, but he ultimately failed to secure a lasting agreement on North Korea’s nuclear programme.

Since then, Pyongyang has repeatedly declared itself an “irreversible” nuclear state.

Last month, Kim appeared alongside Chinese President Xi Jinping and Putin at an elaborate military parade in Beijing.

In a joint statement from Moscow and Pyongyang released by KCNA earlier this week, Russia’s ruling party said it “expressed firm support for the measures taken” by North Korea “to bolster up the country’s defence capabilities”.

Seong-Hyon Lee, a visiting scholar at the Harvard University Asia Centre, told AFP: “It is crucial to see this parade not as an isolated event, but as the culmination of a deliberate, structural shift in regional geopolitics.”

“It serves as a stark warning that Seoul’s strengthened alliance with Washington will be met with a consolidated and powerful trilateral bloc on its doorstep.”

– Agence France-Presse