North Korea turns 70, celebrates with huge military parade
The parade, like each year, was large but missing conspicuously were Kim Jong-Un's intercontinental ballistic missiles. That was due to his June summit with US President Donald Trump.
Big army, but no ICBMs
Thousands of North Korean troops paraded through Pyongyang Sunday as the nuclear-armed country celebrated its 70th birthday, followed by artillery and tanks, but it refrained from displaying the intercontinental ballistic missiles that have seen it hit with sanctions.
(Photograph:AFP)
Song and dance show
Li Zhanshu, one of the seven members of the Chinese Communist party's Politburo Standing Committee, the country's most powerful body, sat next to him, the two of them occasionally exchanging comments. In photo: North Korea's 70th birthday celebrations began with a concert
(Photograph:AFP)
For god and country
But too militaristic a display might have risked upsetting the recent diplomatic dalliance on the peninsula, after Kim's Singapore meeting with US President Donald Trump in June and his third summit with the South's President Moon Jae-in due in Pyongyang later this month.
(Photograph:AFP)
Top guns
Armoured personnel carriers, multiple rocket launchers and tanks followed, with biplanes flying overhead in a '70' formation. At one point jets trailing red, white and blue smoke -- the colours of the North Korean flag -- roared above the Juche Tower, the stone monument to Kim Il Sung's political philosophy.
(Photograph:AFP)
