North Korea Military Parade: What Missiles Were On Display?

On the eve of South Korea's Winter Olympics, North Korea put up a display of military might at its historic Kim Il Sung Square on Thursday to mark the formation of Korean People’s Army by former leader of the nation, Kim Il Sung.

This year’s parade, which was smaller and more private than last year’s equivalent, was attended by North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and his wife, Ri Sol Ju. The event started at 10 a.m. local time (8:30 p.m. EST Wednesday), around the same time as the North Korean delegation was welcomed in Pyeongchang for the Winter Olympics, CNN reported.

Adressing the people of his country from the balcony at the parade, Kim said: "As long as imperialism is present on the Earth and US's hostile policy against North Korea continues, the mission of the Korea People's Army to be the strong sword that protects the country and people, and peace can never change.”

Unlike the previous years, international media was not invited to film the event, which meant experts had to rely on the footage released by the state media after the event was over in order to determine what types of short-range missiles, intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM) and other weaponry were put on display by North Korea this year.

Keeping in mind that the North Korean state media was often caught altering images in the past, weapons analysts were able to identify a few of the missiles seen in the footage.

Some of screenshots circulated on the social media appeared to show the Hwasong-12, Hwasong-14 and four large Hwasong-15 ICBMs — the last one among the latest military technology that North Korea developed in 2017.

The “nuclear-capable,” solid-fuel, medium-range or intermediate-range ballistic missile Pukguksong-2 was also displayed by North Korea in the parade — a weapon that was successfully tested in 2017. Short-range missiles like the KN-02 was also showcased.

According to a list of the major weaponry that were supposed to be displayed at the parade, the only piece of military artillery missing from the display was the Unha-3 SLV rocket launcher.

There were also some weaponry displayed at the parade, the existence of which were not made public prior to the showcase. One Twitter user pointed out that North Korea might have already developed something akin to Russia's 9K720 Iskander, which is a mobile short-range ballistic missile system.

"If we were to look at last year, we saw lots of new technology. I think this year it will definitely be an opportunity for North Korea to show off the things it tested last year," Melissa Hanham, a senior research associate at the Middlebury Institute for International Studies' Center for Nonproliferation Studies told CNN.

As to why North Korea would decide against the inclusion of International media, Hanham opined that “there's probably a wide variety of reasons why that may be happening.”

“Maybe they're trying to prevent something small ... or maybe they realize that they are giving away a lot of intelligence,” she added.

Around 50,000 people gathered to watch the event, which included around 13,000 soldiers.