North Korea reports holding 'grand' military parade

North Korea reports holding 'grand' military parade
by AFP Staff Writers
Seoul (AFP) Oct 10, 2025

North Korea held a "grand military parade" to mark 80 years under the ruling Workers' Party, showing off some of its most advanced weapons to a bevy of high-level foreign guests, state media reported Saturday.

The event came as leader Kim Jong Un has been emboldened by the war in Ukraine, securing critical support from Russia after sending thousands of North Korean troops to fight alongside Moscow's forces.

Dmitry Medvedev -- deputy head of Russia's Security Council and a key ally of President Vladimir Putin -- was in Pyongyang for the 80th anniversary celebrations, while Chinese Premier Li Qiang led Beijing's delegation.

"A grand military parade celebrating the 80th anniversary of the founding of the Workers' Party of Korea was held at Kim Il Sung Square on October 10," Pyongyang's official Korean Central News Agency said.

It featured some of the isolated, nuclear-armed country's most advanced weapons, including its new Hwasong-20 intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), which KCNA described as its "most powerful nuclear strategic weapon system".

The parade displayed "our country's inexhaustible defense technology potential and its astonishing pace of development that the world can no longer ignore", KCNA said.

Among the featured weapons, long-range strategic cruise missiles, drone launch vehicles, and ground-to-air and ground-to-ground missiles paraded one after another, it added.

The country's "invincible" army "has always added doubled strength to our Party's efforts to overcome difficulties and bring earlier a bright future", Kim said in a speech.

Last month, Kim appeared alongside Chinese President Xi Jinping and Putin at an elaborate military parade in Beijing.

The celebrations in Pyongyang come after Seoul said a meeting between North Korea and the United States "cannot be ruled out" on the sidelines of this year's APEC summit in South Korea.

US President Donald Trump met Kim three times during his first term and once famously said the pair had fallen "in love", but he ultimately failed to secure a lasting agreement on North Korea's nuclear programme.

Since then Pyongyang has repeatedly declared itself an "irreversible" nuclear state.

In a joint statement from Moscow and Pyongyang released by KCNA earlier this week, Russia's ruling party said it "expressed firm support for the measures taken" by North Korea "to bolster up the country's defence capabilities".

"It is crucial to see this parade not as an isolated event, but as the culmination of a deliberate, structural shift in regional geopolitics," Seong-Hyon Lee, a visiting scholar at the Harvard University Asia Center, told AFP.

"It serves as a stark warning that Seoul's strengthened alliance with Washington will be met with a consolidated and powerful trilateral bloc on its doorstep."