SEOUL.-Tens of thousands of North Korean citizens marched over the weekend in protests against the US, in which they demanded “merciless” revenge against “US imperialists”, on the 73rd anniversary of the start of the Korean War, according to state media reported on Monday.
More than 120,000 people took part in the mass demonstrations on Sunday in the country’s capital, according to the Korean Central News Agency.
Although the conflict between 1950 and 1953 began with a North Korean surprise attack, the protesters mobilized in Pyongyang defended their government’s version of events and accused the United States of provoking the war and leaving the Koreans with “injuries (…) They can never heal.”
Meanwhile in South Korea, A North Korean defector-turned-activist said he launched balloons containing some 200,000 anti-Pyongyang propaganda leaflets and anti-COVID-19 medical supplies across the border on Sunday night. The activist was continuing a multi-year campaign that has often drawn angry responses from the North.
Photos provided by Park Sang-hak showed a banner with a picture of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and a message outlining how his grandfather, Kim Il Sung, was responsible for starting the Korean War. Pyongyang had no comment on Park’s latest balloon launch.
North Korea is highly sensitive to any outside attempt to undermine Kim’s leadership and weaken his absolute control over the country’s 26 million people.
At Sunday’s marches, the North Koreans also expressed pride in Kim’s growing missile and nuclear weapons programs and insisted that the country now has the “absolute strongest weapon to punish US imperialists and the self-defense war deterrent that no enemy will dare to provoke”.
Images published by North Korea’s Rodong Sinmun daily showed a packed stadium, probably tens of thousands of people, wearing COVID-19 masks. People raised their fists and held up banners with messages like “Eradicate the US imperialist invaders” and “All of the continental United States is within our range.”
Regional tensions remain high and both North Korean weapons tests and joint South Korean-US military exercises have intensified in a cycle of successive retaliations.
Since the beginning of 2022, Pyongyang has carried out a hundred test launches of missiles of various ranges, in an attempt by Kim to show a capability to carry out nuclear attacks on both the US mainland and South Korea. The North is also accelerating its efforts to launch its first military reconnaissance satellite after a failed first attempt in May.
FUENTE: With information from AP
