North Korea parades military might, accuses Trump of 'creating a war situation'

Military parade in Pyongyang
(Image credit: ED JONES/AFP/Getty Images)

North Korea on Saturday celebrated the birthday of the regime's founding president, Kim Il Sung, with a massive parade in Pyongyang flaunting its intercontinental and submarine-based ballistic missiles, along with tanks, planes, and other equipment.

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The annual display appears to be scheduled in lieu of a rumored nuclear weapons test; unnamed senior U.S. officials reportedly told NBC News the U.S. is prepared to respond to such a test with a preemptive attack, a story "multiple senior defense officials" later categorically denied to Fox News. Last weekend, a U.S. Navy carrier strike group moved toward North Korea in what was understood as a show of force.

Vice Marshal Choe Ryong Hae, considered North Korea's second-in-command, accused President Trump of "creating a war situation" while speaking at Saturday's parade, pledging Pyongyang "will respond to an all-out war with an all-out war and a nuclear war with our style of a nuclear attack."

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Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.