Wearing a Western-style black suit and white collared shirt, Kim was pictured on state-run television laughing heartily and clapping while watching soldiers, tanks and missiles on display in a large square. The event marked the 105th birth anniversary of his grandfather Kim Il Sung, the nation’s founder, North Korea’s most important holiday, Bloomberg reported.
“If the U.S. provokes recklessly, the revolutionary forces will take an annihilating strike," Choe Ryong Hae, a senior regime official, said in a speech at the parade. North Korea is ready for a nuclear or full-scale war if the U.S. wants it, he added.
The military parade displayed submarine-launched ballistic missiles for the first time and what appeared to be a new intercontinental ballistic missile, in addition to others that have already been publicly unveiled, South Korea’s Yonhap News reported. In 2012, North Korea unveiled long-range missiles that some arms analysts dismissed as fake.
Tensions have risen in the past week after President Donald Trump’s administration sent warships near North Korea and threatened to act alone if Kim’s regime proceeds with a nuclear or ballistic missile test. China urged all sides to back down on Friday, warning that a war on the Korean Peninsula would have devastating consequences.
U.S. Vice President Mike Pence is set to arrive in South Korea on Sunday as part of a 10-day swing through Asia that also includes a stop in Japan. Administration officials said Thursday it’s considering economic sanctions and military options if a provocation by North Korea occurs.
While not publicly defining its plans, the White House has said that all options are on the table to prevent North Korea from acquiring the ability to strike the U.S. with a nuclear weapon. Despite the saber rattling, Trump has found little support -- publicly or behind the scenes -- from friends in the region.
Any U.S. military strike risks leading to a war between the world’s biggest economies that would threaten to devastate South Korea and Japan, two American allies in striking range of retaliatory attacks. China has backed North Korea since the peninsula was last at war in the 1950s, in part to prevent having an American ally on its border.
Pence Visit
A U.S. strike may prompt North Korea to immediately unleash artillery fire on Seoul and its surroundings, which is home to just more than half of South Korea’s 51 million people, according to a report published by Stratfor last year. It then may activate air or naval assets and larger ballistic missiles that can target South Korean, Japanese or American bases in the region with nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.
The White House expects South Korean officials to discuss responses during Pence’s visit, and he also plans to meet troops and discuss possible military steps with Army General Vincent Brooks, the commander of United States Forces Korea. He’ll promote the deployment of the Thaad missile-defense system in the region, a move that has annoyed China.
Pence’s trip comes after Trump dispatched the USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier and its battle group to the waters around the Korean Peninsula. Commercial satellite imagery of North Korea’s Punggye-ri nuclear test site obtained by 38 North, a program devoted to analysis of the country at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, showed activity at the site suggestive of preparations for a nuclear test.
“North Korea is a problem,” Trump told reporters at the White House on Thursday. “The problem will be taken care of.”
China Warning
While Trump has ratcheted up pressure on China to contain its neighbor and ally, he has also sought to build bridges in recent weeks with President Xi Jinping. Trump on Wednesday highlighted China’s move to ban coal imports from North Korea, noting that a fleet of cargo ships had turned back.
“That’s a big step, and they have many other steps that I know about,” Trump said at a news conference. He later said he thought Xi “means well and I think he wants to help.”
The Global Times, a Communist Party-affiliated Chinese newspaper, argued in an editorial this week that Beijing should support stiffer UN sanctions against North Korea, including the limit of oil exports, if the country conducts another another nuclear test.
Even so, China is getting increasingly alarmed at the brinkmanship. Foreign Minister Wang Yi urged all parties on Friday “to stop provoking and threatening each other and not to make the situation irretrievable," according to the official Xinhua News Agency.
“Once a war really happens, the result will be nothing but losing all round and no one could become a winner,” Wang said. “No matter who the nation is, if it continues to provoke wars in the Peninsula, it has to bear this historical responsibility and pay its price.”