North Korea military parade features protective suits and gas masks
a large military parade. North Korea celebrated the 73rd anniversary of its foundation with a larger military parade. Numbers of military personnel in orange hazmat suits are believed to be part of the COVID-19 border protection team but unlike previous prison parades, there were no ballistic missiles Mirkarimi that kunjungan was in attendance, Although he didn’t deliver talked about Korea correspondent .
| you as usual when it comes to these parades and let’s be honest here, this third parade in North Korea has held in a year and even for North Korea that is extremely frequent those and, of course stamping soldiers all parading past Kim Jong moon, and they came in their units, one by one, and then of course we thought company. |
Billions at the end students, armed with their rifles that they two took to the parade. And at the end there was a massive fireworks show so it was quite the event, but again if you mentioned no ballistic missile no new strategic missile on shore.
| Compare that to for her, for instance, last October is parade where we saw this massive, what is thought to be a ballistic missile in controversial contravention of the UN Security Council resolutions. So there were usually two reasons for parade one to kind of show off your strength to the world, |
but one of the main reasons is to shore up domestic support to rally people inside of North Korea and it seems that on this occasion. That is what Kim has opted for. And when it comes to those three parades, it may well be that the domestic situation in North Korea is such that he does feel that he needs to rally the people at this moment, food shortages are worsening.
I am told, across the country, even the regime itself admits that the harvest lash was yesterday. I just wanted to I was able to communicate effectively in the second version there with her, and then they are facing a food crisis, and then of course the border has been closed since last January, that means trade by trade, isn’t getting in from China trade is down by about 82% this year. So as you can see these vital supplies are not getting through to people so it may well be that he needs to shore up the support of the people to kind of give them something to look at, or display, even while their bellies are empty. Right.
One other question for you, Laura. We’re just getting news in the last half an hour of North Korea being banned from the forthcoming Winter Olympics.
That was in, by the IOC the International Olympic Committee, and it was because North Korea did not attend the Tokyo Olympics now where are we surprised that North
Korea did not send a team to talk you know why, because as I mentioned those border closures were so stringent, in fact, that is a shoot to kill policy at the North Korean border the idea that they were going to send teams out of Japan and then allow them back in again, really didn’t seem very feasible
So, when it came to the decision that was a decision North Korea made it contravenes IOC regulations, and they have been banned from participating in Beijing. What does that mean well we haven’t had any reaction from North Korea.
I think there’s a bit of disappointment here in South Korea, there’s, you know, huge kind of memories of the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics which were held here in South Korea just under four years ago, when the two Koreas came together, it was the start of the talks between North and South Korea,
and Kim Jong Un and Donald Trump, so I think there was a little bit of hope that perhaps the Beijing Olympics could provide a platform for inter Korean relations, but it’s not to be okay. For the moment .