Seoul: North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called for bolstering the country’s military strength at an unprecedented pace, during a photo session with the participants of a military parade held earlier this week, Pyongyang’s state media reported on Friday.
Speaking on Thursday, Kim stressed that the prosperity of the North depends on a “powerful army” and noted “one can demonstrate one’s dignity and honor only when one is strong”, according to the North’s official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).
He added that suppressing the “increasingly brutal imperialist tyranny by force” requires its army to “grow stronger at an incomparably faster speed than that of the past history”, Yonhap News Agency quoted the KCNA as saying.
Kim also praised the participants for “glorifying” the parade as an event to be “specially recorded in history”, saying that it has “made a clearer description of the prestige and greatness, high honour and rosy future of our state”.
Top military officials attended the photo session, including Ri Pyong-chol and Ri Yong-gil, who both serve as vice chairman of the Central Military Commission of the ruling Workers’ Party.
Kim last held such a mass photo session last month with members of the Korean Children’s Union.
The North held the night-time parade Wednesday to celebrate the 75th founding anniversary of its armed forces, during which it displayed its key weapons, including Hwasong-17 intercontinental ballistic missiles.
Kim attended the event along with his wife, Ri Sol-ju, and his daughter Ju-ae.
State media did not mention whether Kim delivered a speech during the event.