North Koreans in their thousands have been marching across their nation in state-organised anti-American protests, with promises to “annihilate” the enemy.
According to the dictatorial regime’s propaganda news agencies, mass rallies were staged to mark the “day of struggle against US imperialism,” with leaders in the rogue state’s government pledging to destroy America.Signs shown on North Korean TV by the state-run Korean Central News Agency read: “The entire continental US is within our range,” and: “The imperialist US is the destroyer of peace.”
The rallies were organised to mark the 73rd anniversary of the start of the Korean War. The gatherings, held in each of the country’s nine provinces, had government leaders denouncing the US as “imperialist beasts,” and declaring that North Korea had “firmly grasped the strongest absolute weapon to punish the US imperialists.”
More than 120,000 people participated in Sunday’s mass rallies in the nation’s capital, Pyongyang. The demonstrators mobilised there were fed their government’s version of events that led to the formation of North Korea in the 1950s, accusing the US of provoking the war, leaving Koreans with “wounds that can never be healed”.
Meanwhile in South Korea, a North Korean defector-turned-activist said he sent balloons carrying 200,000 anti-Pyongyang propaganda leaflets and Covid-19 medical supplies across the border on Sunday night, continuing a campaign that has often led to angry responses from the North. Photos sent by Park Sang-hak showed a placard with a picture of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and a message that highlighted how his grandfather, Kim Il Sung, was responsible for starting the Korean War.
North Korea is extremely sensitive about any outside attempt to undermine Kim’s total control over the country’s 26 million inhabitants. At the rallies on Sunday, North Koreans were shown expressing their pride in Kim’s expansion of nuclear weapons and missile programmes, claiming the country now had the “strongest absolute weapon to punish the US imperialists and the war deterrence for self-defence which no enemy dare provoke”.
Photos published by the North’s Rodong Sinmun newspaper showed a packed stadium of people in Covid facemasks, raising their fists in the air and holding up anti-American signs. The rallies came amid heightened tensions in the region, as the pace of North Korean weapons demonstrations and US joint military exercises with South Korea intensified.
Since the start of 2022, North Korea has test-fired around 100 missiles as Kim attempted to display his ability to conduct nuclear strikes on both the US mainland and South Korea. The North was also redoubling its efforts to launch a military reconnaissance satellite into orbit following a failed first attempt in May.
There were also signs that North Korea was planning a gigantic military parade in Pyongyang, where it would showcase its new military hardware. Recent commercial satellite images showed troop and vehicle movements and the building of structures suggesting preparations were under way for a parade, probably for the July 27 anniversary of the Korean War armistice agreement.
When president, Donald Trump held disarmament talks in 2019 with Kim Jong Un but failed to reach a deal. Kim has since launched new nuclear missile tests under the Biden administration, with the aim of making the weapons reach US soil.
