Tag Archives: Kim Il Sung

North Korean mock-up birthday video shows missiles blowing up U.S.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un waves to people cheering during an opening ceremony of a newly constructed residential complex in Ryomyong street in Pyongyang, North Korea April 13, 2017. REUTERS/Damir Sagolj

By Ju-min Park

SEOUL (Reuters) – North Korea put on a musical show to mark the birthday of founding father Kim Il Sung, which ended with a mock-up video of missiles engulfing the United States in flames, prompting cheers from the audience and smiles from current leader Kim Jong Un.

North Korea’s state television aired footage of a choral performance attended by Kim Jong Un, the elder Kim’s grandson, on Sunday, a day after a huge military parade in Pyongyang, which also marked the 105th birth anniversary of Kim Il Sung.

The singing was followed by footage of its test-firing of a missile in February which, in the video, was joined by other missiles shooting into sky, passing over the Pacific and exploding in giant balls of flames in the United States.

The video ended with a picture of the American flag in flames, overlapping row after row of white crosses in a cemetery. (http://reut.tv/2orqo6d)

“When the performance was over, all the performers and participants in the military parade broke into enthusiastic cheers of ‘hurrah!’,” state run KCNA news agency said.

State TV footage showed leader Kim smiling and waving in return.

“The Dear Supreme Leader waved back to them and congratulated the artistes on their successful performance,” KCNA said.

North Korea said in February that it had successfully tested a new type of medium- to long-range ballistic missile, the Pukguksong-2, propelled by a solid-fuel engine.

During Saturday’s military parade it displayed what appeared to be new intercontinental ballistic missiles. And a day later it conducted a failed missile test, which drew international condemnation.

North Korea regularly threatens to destroy the United States and amid heightened tension on the Korean peninsula, it has escalated a war of words, warning of full-out nuclear war if Washington takes military action against it.

U.S. Vice President Mike Pence, on a trip to Asia, has repeatedly warned that the “era of strategic patience” with North Korea is over and on Wednesday said it would meet any attack with an “overwhelming response”.

(Editing by Nick Macfie & Simon Cameron-Moore)

North Korea displays apparently new missiles as U.S. carrier group approaches

Military vehicles carry missiles with characters reading 'Pukkuksong' during a military parade marking the 105th birth anniversary of country's founding father, Kim Il Sung in Pyongyang, April 15, 2017. REUTERS/Damir Sagolj

By Sue-Lin Wong and James Pearson

PYONGYANG/SEOUL (Reuters) – North Korea displayed what appeared to be new long-range and submarine-based missiles on the 105th birth anniversary of its founding father, Kim Il Sung, on Saturday, as a nuclear-powered U.S. aircraft carrier group steamed towards the region.

Missiles appeared to be the main theme of a giant military parade, with Kim’s grandson, leader Kim Jong Un, taking time to greet the commander of the Strategic Forces, the branch that oversees the missile arsenal.

A U.S. Navy attack on a Syrian airfield this month with Tomahawk missiles raised questions about U.S. President Donald Trump’s plans for reclusive North Korea, which has conducted several missile and nuclear tests in defiance of U.N. sanctions, regularly threatening to destroy the United States.

Kim Jong Un, looking relaxed in a dark suit and laughing with aides, oversaw the festivities on the “Day of the Sun” at Pyongyang’s main Kim Il Sung Square.

Goose-stepping soldiers and marching bands filled the square, next to the Taedonggang River that flows through Pyongyang, in the hazy spring sunshine, followed by tanks, multiple-launch rocket systems and other weapons.

Single-engine propeller-powered planes flew in a 105 formation overhead.

Unlike at some previous parades attended by Kim, there did not appear to be a senior Chinese official in attendance. China is North Korea’s lone major ally but has spoken out against its missile and nuclear tests and has supported U.N. sanctions. China on Friday again called for talks to defuse the crisis.

Weapons analysts said they believed some of the missiles on display were new types of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM).

The North has said it has developed and would launch a missile that can strike the mainland United States but officials and experts believe it is some time away from mastering all the necessary technology.

“EARLY DAYS”

North Korea showed two new kinds of ICBM enclosed in canister launchers mounted on the back of trucks, suggesting Pyongyang was working towards a “new concept” of ICBM, said Melissa Hanham, a senior research associate at the U.S.-based Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, California.

“However, North Korea has a habit of showing off new concepts in parades before they ever test or launch them,” Hanham said.

“It is still early days for these missile designs.”

The Pukkuksong submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBM) were also on parade. It was the first time North Korea had shown the missiles, which have a range of more than 1,000 km (600 miles), at a military parade.

Displaying more than one of the missiles indicates North Korea is progressing with its plan to base a missile on a submarine, which are hard to detect, said Joshua Pollack, editor of the Washington-based Nonproliferation Review.

“It suggests a commitment to this program,” said Pollack. “Multiple SLBMs seems like a declaration of intent to advance the program.”

North Korea, still technically at war with the South after their 1950-53 conflict ended in a truce but not a treaty, has on occasion conducted missile or nuclear tests to coincide with big political events and often threatens the United States, South Korea and Japan.

Choe Ryong Hae, a close aide to Kim Jong Un, addressed the packed square with a characteristically bellicose warning to the United States.

“If the United States wages reckless provocation against us, our revolutionary power will instantly counter with annihilating strike, and we will respond to full-out war with full-out war and to nuclear war with our style of nuclear strike warfare,” he said.

PENCE TO VISIT SOUTH

State news agency KCNA said the Trump administration’s “serious military hysteria” had reached a “dangerous phase which can no longer be overlooked”.

The United States has warned that a policy of “strategic patience” with North Korea is over. U.S. Vice President Mike Pence travels to South Korea on Sunday on a long-planned 10-day trip to Asia.

China has also stepped up economic pressure on North Korea. It banned all imports of North Korean coal on Feb. 26 under U.N. sanctions, cutting off the North’s most important export product.

China’s national airline, Air China, weeks ago canceled some flights to Pyongyang due to poor demand but it has not suspended all flights there, it said on Friday, denying a report by Chinese state broadcaster CCTV that all flights run by the airline between the two cities were to be suspended.

China’s Global Times newspaper, which is published by the People’s Daily, the Communist Party’s official paper, said North Korea must have felt the shockwave from the 11-ton “mother of all bombs” dropped by U.S. forces on Islamic State-linked fighters in Afghanistan on Thursday.

“It would be nice if the bomb could frighten Pyongyang, but its actual impact may just be the opposite,” it said in an editorial.

North Korea on Friday denounced the United States for bringing “huge nuclear strategic assets” to the region as the USS Carl Vinson strike group with a flag-ship nuclear-powered aircraft carrier steamed closer.

In Dandong, China’s main border post with North Korea, hundreds of North Koreans gathered at a cultural center carrying floral displays.

With the men wearing pins adorned with photos of Kim Il Sung, and the women in brightly colored traditional dress, crowds lined up to bow to portraits of their state founder before touring an exhibition of photos and North Korean paintings.

KCNA was gushing in its praise of Kim Il Sung, recalling the time he met former U.S. president Jimmy Carter in 1994.

“Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter was so fascinated by his personality as to say that Kim Il Sung is greater than that George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln put together, eulogizing him as the great sun god of human destiny.” it said.

(Additional reporting by Jack Kim, Minwoo Park in SEOUL, Natalie Thomas and Damir Sagolj in PYONGYANG, Michael Martina in BEIJING and Philip Wen in DANDONG.; Writing by Nick Macfie; Editing by Robert Birsel and Stephen Coates)

Woken up before 5 a.m. to see North Korea’s leader, five hours later

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and his sister Kim Yo Jong attend an opening ceremony of a newly constructed residential complex in Ryomyong street in Pyongyang, North Korea April 13, 2017. REUTERS/Damir Sagolj

By Sue-Lin Wong

PYONGYANG (Reuters) – It’s unusual being a foreign correspondent in North Korea, as a team from Reuters, among scores of journalists visiting the reclusive state, found out on Thursday.

Invited to Pyongyang for this week’s celebrations of the 105th birth anniversary of founder president Kim Il Sung, the journalists were herded together for hours, not allowed water and not given access to phones – to attend a street opening by North Korea’s current leader, his grandson Kim Jong Un.

The preparations began on Wednesday night when North Korean government minders rushed into the media center at our hotel just after 10 p.m., told us to stop working and pack up our laptops because “you won’t be coming back here tonight.”

Gathered in the lobby, we were told there would be a “big and important” event on Thursday. With tensions high because of the possibility that Pyongyang may conduct a nuclear or long-range missile test in defiance of U.S. warnings of retaliation, the words were striking.

Our minders refused to give details. Just bring your passports and cameras, nothing else. No phones, no laptops, no water.

“No water?” we ask.

One of our government minders, Ri Hyon Mu, shifted awkwardly.

“I am being very direct now. Please urinate and excrete before the event as there will be no water closets.”

No more details were given, except to be ready for a 6 a.m. start.

At 4.45 a.m., the phone rang. It was Ri. Our wake-up call had been pushed forward.

Soon, the hotel lobby was thronging with journalists from around the world, armed with video and photo cameras, all with blue armbands with white letters that read “journalist” in Korean.

We were piled into buses that weaved through the manicured streets of Pyongyang as the sun rose. Groups of men in grey suits and women in colorful dresses, many holding bunches of red and pink plastic flowers, were walking briskly, a sign we were headed to a mass rally of some sort.

We arrived at the People’s Palace of Culture for what turned into a two-hour security check, where our wallets and chocolate were taken away and tied up in black plastic bags.

The Reuters team boarded a bus after the security check, only for a minder to shout at us to get off – “This bus is for Americans only!”

“That’s the imperialist bus,” O Kum Sok, another minder, explained with a grin, as we got into another bus.

CLAPPING AND CHEERING

We set off again at around 7.30 a.m., passing crowds of North Koreans, some squatting, most standing. Our buses stopped just past the Chinese embassy, one of the largest foreign missions in the city.

We are at Ryomyong, a new residential street, constructed, we were told, in less than a year, lined with more than twenty buildings, each about thirty or forty-plus storeys.

Soon, tens of thousands of North Koreans had gathered in the area, some in military dress, most in traditional suits and dresses holding balloons, plastic flowers and North Korean flags. They looked curiously at us, some smiling slightly.

A brass band played as the square filled up. Then around 10 a.m. the crowd fell silent.

Suddenly, there was fervent clapping and cheering, balloons bobbing, flags flapping. Kim Jong Un and top government officials walked onto the stage to a fanfare from the brass band reserved to mark his public appearances.

It is “a very significant, great event, more powerful than the explosion of hundreds of nuclear bombs on the top of the enemies’ heads,” said North Korea’s premier Pak Pong Ju, the main speaker at the opening ceremony.

The completion of Ryomyong Street is one of the examples of “a brilliant victory based on self-reliance and self-development against maneuvers by the U.S. and vassal forces”, he said, using the state’s typical descriptions of the United States and its allies.

A translation of the speech was provided when we returned to the hotel.

Kim did not speak but clapped intermittently. After about twenty minutes of speeches, a thick, red ribbon was unfurled on stage. Kim cut the ribbon and was whisked away in a shiny black Mercedes as his sister Kim Yo Jong bowed deeply. Ryomyong Street was officially open.

(Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)