North Korea holds giant military parade amid missile show-off speculations: Seoul

North Korea held a giant military parade early on October 10 to mark the 75th founding anniversary of the ruling Worker’s Party, according to the South Korean military. North Korea had been preparing for months to celebrate the anniversary of the ruling party amid speculations by experts around a possible unveiling of newly developed, powerful missiles.

South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement that there were signs of a military parade involving large crowd and equipment at Pyongyang’s Kim Il Sung Square. A South Korean professor had earlier said that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un would like to mobilise the public amid economic crisis and send a strong message to the entire world amid a deadlock in nuclear diplomacy.

Recent satellite images showed rehearsal on a large scale for the major military parade, as hundreds of vehicles and thousands of troops gathered at the Mirim Parade Training Ground in Pyongyang suburbs. 38 North, a program of the Stimson Center dedicated to analysing events in and around North Korea, released satellite imagery which showed the formation of troops and vehicles in the training ground. 

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Military parade rehearsal

The Mirim facility has regularly been used as a rehearsal location for parades but the rehearsals, according to 38 North, started slightly later when compared to previous years, possibly because of COVID-19 measures and weather constraints. The satellite imagery also suggested the presence of a vehicle likely carrying intercontinental ballistic missile at the parade training ground. The analysts from 38 North said that the shape and size of the vehicle suggests a transporter-erector-launcher (TEL) for a large missile. 

“While imagery resolution is insufficient to determine exactly what the vehicle is, relative size and shape suggests that it may be a transporter-erector-launcher (TEL) for a large missile,” the group said in its report.

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(With AP inputs)