North Korea paraded its intercontinental ballistic missiles in a
massive military display in central Pyongyang on Saturday, with ruler
Kim Jong Un looking on with delight as his nation flaunted its
increasingly sophisticated military hardware amid rising regional
tensions.
Kim did not speak during the annual parade, which celebrates the 1912
birthday of his late grandfather Kim Il Sung, North Korea's founding
ruler, but a top official warned that the North would stand up to any
threat posed by the United States.
Choe Ryong Hae said President Donald Trump was guilty of "creating a
war situation" on the Korean Peninsula by dispatching U.S. forces to the
region.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un waves during a
military parade on Saturday, April 15, 2017, in Pyongyang, North Korea
to celebrate the 105th birth anniversary of Kim Il Sung, the country's
late founder and grandfather of current ruler Kim Jong Un. (AP
Photo/Wong Maye-E)
"We will respond to an all-out war with an all-out war and a nuclear
war with our style of a nuclear attack," said Choe, widely seen by
analysts as North Korea's No. 2 official.
The parade, the annual highlight of North Korea's most important
holiday, came amid growing international worries that North Korea may be
preparing for its sixth nuclear test or a major missile launch, such as
its first flight test of an ICBM capable of reaching U.S. shores.
But if the parade signaled a readiness for war, North Korea has long
insisted that its goal is peace - and survival - with the growing
arsenal a way to ensure that the government in Pyongyang is not easily
overthrown.
North Korea saw the toppling of Saddam Hussein in Iraq and Moammar
Gadhafi in Libya - neither of whom had nuclear weapons - as proof of the
weapons' power.
"It will be the largest of miscalculations if the United States
treats us like Iraq and Libya, which are living out miserable fates as
victims of aggression, and Syria, which didn't respond immediately even
after it was attacked," said a Friday statement by the general staff of
the North Korean army, according to the official Korean Central News
Agency.
Also Friday, North Korea's vice foreign minister told The Associated
Press in an exclusive interview that Trump's tweets - he recently
tweeted, for example, that the North is "looking for trouble" - have
inflamed tensions.
"Trump is always making provocations with his aggressive words," Han Song Ryol said.
U.S. retaliatory strikes earlier this month against Syria over a
chemical weapons attack on civilians, coupled with Trump's dispatching
of what he called an "armada" of ships to the region, touched off fears
in South Korea that the United States was preparing for military action
against the North.
Pyongyang has also expressed anger over the ongoing annual spring
military exercises the U.S. holds with South Korea, which it considers a
rehearsal for invasion.But U.S. officials told The Associated Press on Friday that the Trump administration had settled on a policy that will emphasize increasing pressure on Pyongya
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