North Korea stages live-fire artillery drill for army anniversary

North Korea has staged a giant artillery firing drill to mark the 85th founding anniversary of its military, South Korean media reported, a move seen as a show of strength in the face of mounting pressure over the isolated country's nuclear weapons programme.

North Korea launched the barrage of live-fire artillery, featuring hundreds of guns, near the eastern port city of Wonsan, a military source told South Korea’s Yonhap news agency, and leader Kim Jong-un is presumed to have participated in the drill.

“If the US and warmongers run amok with a reckless pre-emptive strike, we will stage the most brutal punishment of a pre-emptive attack in the sky, on land as well as at sea and from under the water without any warning or prior notice,” Rodong Sinmun, the official organ of the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea, wrote in a fiery editorial to mark the anniversary of the Korean People’s Army.

South Korea and the US are watching North Korea to see if conducts a sixth nuclear test or launches another ballistic missile test, in defiance of United Nations sanctions, to mark the occasion.

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“Thanks to having invincible military power, North Korea is successfully pushing forward the cause of building a socialist power, frustrating the hostile forces’ madcap nuclear war provocations,” the North’s state news agency said.

Meanwhile on the other side of the demilitarised zone (DMZ) that has marked the buffer between North and South since the end of the Korean War in 1953, the nuclear submarine USS Michigan made a port of call in Busan in South Korea.

The Michigan, which is built to carry and launch ballistic missiles and Tomahawk cruise missiles, is due to join up with the USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier strike group. The strike group is now approaching the region, after some earlier ambiguity about its destination.

"We just stand ready. That's the only message we have [to North Korea] Vincent K Brooks, the commander of US Forces Korea, was quoted as saying on Yonhap. "We are committed to the ROK [South Korea]US alliance. That's the most important thing. That's our duty. That's what we do."

‘Global threat’

Even though it is one of the main actors in the crisis, South Korea is largely absent from much of the dialogue because it is currently led by an interim government under acting president and prime minister Hwang Kyo-ahn before elections on May 9th.

In Tokyo, top nuclear envoys from South Korea, Japan, and the US were meeting to discuss the North's nuclear programme.

On Monday, US president Donald Trump called for tougher new UN sanctions on Pyongyang, saying the North was a global threat and "a problem that we have to finally solve".

China, North Korea's sole major ally with whom relations appear to be under strain, has called for calm and dialogue from both sides, while President Xi Jinping urged Mr Trump to exercise restraint.

“Judging from their recent words and deeds, policymakers in Pyongyang have seriously misread the UN sanctions, which are aimed at its nuclear/missile provocations, not its system or leadership,” the official China Daily said in an editorial.

“They have unfairly misrepresented Beijing’s role in the process, disregarding its preoccupation with peace, humanitarian concerns and non-interference in the [North Korea’s] domestic affairs. And they have greatly underestimated the international community’s – not just any individual stakeholder’s political will to denuclearise the peninsula.”