FROM EIR DAILY ALERT
North Korea’s National Day Parade Signals Hopes for Korean and World Peace
Sept. 9, 2018 (EIRNS)—President Donald Trump tweeted Sunday afternoon that
“North Korea has just staged their parade, celebrating 70th anniversary of founding, without the customary display of nuclear missiles. Theme was peace and economic development. Experts believe that North Korea cut out the nuclear missiles to show President Trump its commitment to denuclearize. @FoxNews This is a big and very positive statement from North Korea,”
President Trump wrote, and went on:
“Thank you To Chairman Kim. We will both prove everyone wrong! There is nothing like good dialogue from two people that like each other! Much better than before I took office.”
Toronto’s Globe and Mail captured the hopeful shift in this year’s parade from those of past years:
“Instead of inter-continental ballistic missiles, a parade float depicted notable dates in the ongoing detente with South Korea, under a giant red text proclaiming ‘Fatherland reunification through the strength of our nation.’
“And instead of nuclear boasting, a group of children marched with sunflower signs in front of another float emblazoned with ‘Nothing to Envy,’ a common education slogan. Beneath it was a drawing of a rocket with four portholes leaping upward on tongues of flame, decorated with a single word: ‘Future.’ It was a spaceship, an image of scientific aspiration rather than belligerent advancement.”
D.P.R.K. leader Kim Jong-un attended the event, but the major address was given by the head of North Korea’s parliament, Kim Yong-nam, whose speech according to Western and Asian media alike focused on economic development. Xinhua reported that Kim Yong-nam said that
“under the leadership of Kim Jong Un, the D.P.R.K. has made great achievements in economic construction. He urged citizens to carry out the strategic line of economic construction put forward at the Third Plenary Meeting of the Seventh Central Committee of the Worker’s Party of Korea and to contribute to world peace and the unification of the Korean Peninsula.”
