Kim Jong-un at military parade with newest missile to hit US

KIM JONG UN was joined by high-level delegations from Russia and China at a military parade in Pyongyang where North Korea showed off its newest missile designed to deliver a nuclear warhead to the US.

Among the weapons on display was North Korea’s Hwasong-18 intercontinental ballistic missile, the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported Friday about the event held the night before. Multipurpose attack drones also flew around the parade skies, KCNA said, without saying whether Kim spoke at the event.

Initial photos released by North Korea showed Kim sitting between Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Li Hongzhong, a member of the Communist Party of China’s 24-member Politburo.

“This is the largest, most overt North Korean display of nuclearcapable systems with foreign officials,” Ankit Panda, a senior fellow in the nuclear policy program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, wrote on social media.

“The message is clear: Kim has the backing of two powerful regional partners,” who are also veto-wielding members of the United Nations Security Council, he added.

Kim also gave Shoigu a tour of a weapons exhibition, showing him nuclear-capable missiles and other arms. The Russian minister’s visit has stoked US concerns about Pyongyang sending munitions to help the

Kremlin’s war effort in Ukraine.

The visits were the first by senior foreign delegations since Kim shut the country’s borders at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic about three years ago and are the latest sign of an opening by the isolated country. But there has been no indication that North Korea is ready to accept foreign tourists, who have in the past provided cash for the sanctions-hit nation.

The celebrations, coinciding with the 70th anniversary of the signing of the Armistice Agreement that ended Korean War fighting on July 27, 1953, come at a crucial time for Kim. He is looking to powerful friends in Moscow and Beijing for support to fend off new sanctions as he