North Korea’s Kim Marks Founding Day with Parade

By Staff, Agencies

Kim Jong Un has marked the 75th anniversary of the founding of North Korea with a parade of paramilitary forces and promises to deepen ties with China and Russia.

The North Korean leader attended the midnight parade on Friday in Pyongyang’s Kim Il Sung Square which was also attended by a visiting Chinese delegation and Russian diplomats, the country’s state Korean Central News Agency [KCNA] reported on Saturday.

The event featured “paramilitary forces” from the capital, Pyongyang, state media said, rather than soldiers in the regular army, and it did not appear to showcase the country’s fearsome domestically produced weaponry including intercontinental ballistic missiles.

South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency noted that Kim did not deliver a speech at the event and that the parade was mostly led by the Worker-Peasant Red Guards, a civil defense organization that is said to have about 5.7 million members.

Kim met with a visiting Chinese delegation led by Liu Guozhong, vice-premier of the State Council, the second such visit by top officials from Beijing in six weeks. 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.

KCNA said Kim met with Liu and other Chinese delegates ahead of the parade, where they exchanged views on “further intensifying the multi-faceted coordination and cooperation” between the countries.