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You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / North Korea’s 70th Anniversary Parade

North Korea’s 70th Anniversary Parade

by | 49 Comments

This post is in: ,

Is just about to start. I’m not going to try to embed the video because there are several possible channels, and some probably won’t work. Or they may put the parade on delay, as they did last year. I’ll post information as I get it and embed if I can. IIRC, the state channel doesn’t embed, but I could be wrong about that.

The big questions are how many missiles will be in the parade, and will any of them be new.

Meanwhile, for informed commentary, follow these folks on Twitter:

Also

Hashtag is #JucheFest2018.

The police have cleared the route.

 

Update: Looks like they kept it to themselves.

A number of the Twitter follows I gave in the opening post are very sharp analysts of the photos of the missiles. Sometimes North Korea uses mockups in the parade. We don’t know what that says about the production status of the missiles – they may want to use mockups for other reasons, like not damaging the streets. North Korea doesn’t like it when the analysts point out the mockups.

There were several network news people in Pyongyang. They were taken away before the parade began, perhaps to meet Kim Jong Un.

I’ll write a post tomorrow. Going to bed in a little bit.

 

Reader Interactions

49Comments

  1. 1.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??

    Yay! 70 years of a totalitarian nightmare that has resulted in the misery of tens millions! What an awesome accomplishment, Kim!

  2. 2.

    sukabi

    Well, I know what the mad shatters tweet storm will be about…

    I WANT A PARADE. I WANT THE BIGGEST PARADE

  4. 4.

    PhoenixRising

    And if you’d like to lie awake pondering the death of everyone you’ve ever known until Nov. 10th or so, try @armscontrolwonk ‘s excellent speculative novel ‘The 2020 Commission Report’.

    He did too good a job of portraying the chaos inside a White House dedicated to containing the toddler-POTUS’ antics when something happens that they didn’t cause.

    This administration hasn’t yet faced a crisis it didn’t concoct for political purposes. Hope we stay lucky.

  6. 6.

    NotMax

    Potemkin’s Razor.

    The big questions are how many empty missile casings will be in the parade, and will any of them be new.

  8. 8.

    Mike in NC

    We went out to dinner with friends and discussed the fact that months ago Trump asked his advisors to come up with a plan to launch a preemptive strike on North Korea, which they ignored, of course. What could have possibly gone wrong with that scenario?

  9. 9.

    Amir Khalid

    The North Korean regime’s three main accomplishments are miring its people in misery, making trouble in the region, creating the world’s newest royal family, and pwning the stupidest person ever elected POTUS.

  10. 10.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??

    @Cheryl Rofer:
    From the linked interview:

    And the last thing is a meditation there on how hard it is for the US government to make good decisions because we have so many other things that interfere like politics or personal ambition. And I think, particularly for people who are serving in the Trump administration right now — many of whom I think are really quite patriotic — there’s a really hard question about when are you holding things together and when are you enabling bad decisions.

    Wrong answer bub. They’re not patriotic, just self-serving ideologues who are pretending to be patriotic so that they won’t look as bad after this whole thing implodes.

  12. 12.

    Amir Khalid

    @NotMax:
    I suppose another big question, given it’s North Korea, is did the personnel on parade get their breakfast that morning?

  17. 17.

    J R in WV

    Not quite off topic, saw the bestest evah headline from Faux News on Google News just now:

    Failed Obama attacks successful Trump in bitter swan song

    How many lies per word is that? A new world’s record? We think so!!!

    Failed (1); Successful (2) Bitter (3) Swan Song (4) = four lies in only 9 words — an amazing concentration of lies per word entered~!!!~

  19. 19.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @J R in WV: I don’t know their stable enough to guess, but without looking Im gonna say it’s that crazy-eyed traffic court judge, or that bow-tied kid who used to post at Salon

    Whelp, it’s something called a “Christian Witon”

    Christian Whiton was a senior advisor in the Donald Trump and George W. Bush administrations. He is a senior fellow for strategy and public diplomacy at the Center for the National Interest and the author of “Smart Power: Between Diplomacy and War.”

  20. 20.

    raven

    The whining and bitching here has killed college football threads because the sport is sooo dangerous so ya’ll are going to watch a fucking North Korean military parade? Jesus fucking christ.

  21. 21.

    J R in WV

    @Jay:

    Did you notice that Amir listed 4 things after referring to “Three Accomplishments”….? Didja? Joke…. ;-) Coulda listed 6…

  24. 24.

    jl

    @J R in WV: There is a great Onion story to write for that headline. There are only a very few national politicians are popular, and have high approval ratings Obama is one of them, probably most popular.

  26. 26.

    MisterForkbeard

    @??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??: True, but if you’re trying to get these people to stop “enabling bad decisions” then immediately starting off the argument with “you’re a corrupt fool” isnt helpful, even if true.

    Instead, you say “I know SOME people are really just awesomely patriotic and think you’re doing the right thing! But you should stop Trump instead of enabling him and that’s the real heroic thing to do.” It’s a lie, but you maybe get the vain assholes on board.

  29. 29.

    PhoenixRising

    @??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??:

    They’re not patriotic, just self-serving ideologues who are pretending to be patriotic so that they won’t look as bad after this whole thing implodes

    Really, try the book. I am not inclined to give Republicans the benefit of the doubt this decade, and that’s not what he’s suggesting. He knows more than I do, and I suspect more than you do, about the risks built into our multipolar nuclear-armed world that are maximized by a POTUS who is immature, impulsive and has no capacity to evaluate incoming data.

  30. 30.

    Viva BrisVegas

    @sukabi:

    I WANT A PARADE.

    I’m sure that if Trump asked nicely, his good friend Chairman Kim would be more than willing to share.

  33. 33.

    jl

    @raven: ” I’m just being a pain in the ass.”
    I knew that. But then, when I first commented here, I thought you were a high toned old lady.

    But I cannot bring myself to monitor Trumps tweets, so if he starts yelling that he wants one too if his buddy Kim gets one, I hope some kind commenter posts it here.

  35. 35.

    Cheryl Rofer

    @jl: Boring is desirable, and it is what most of the experts expect. But it’s hard to predict what Kim Jong Un has up his sleeve.

    It looks like it hasn’t started yet, or isn’t being sent out to us heathens. I’m close to deciding to go to bed and do a summary post tomorrow.

  36. 36.

    Cheryl Rofer

    Looks like they kept it to themselves.

    A number of the Twitter follows I gave in the opening post are very sharp analysts of the photos of the missiles. Sometimes North Korea uses mockups in the parade. We don’t know what that says about the production status of the missiles – they may want to use mockups for other reasons, like not damaging the streets. North Korea doesn’t like it when the analysts point out the mockups.

    There were several network news people in Pyongyang. They were taken away before the parade began, perhaps to meet Kim Jong Un.

    I guess we’re all going to have to wait for tomorrow morning.

  45. 45.

    Cheryl Rofer

  46. 46.

    Amir Khalid

    @Cheryl Rofer:
    Almost any other government* would realise its military had more important things to do than putting on parades, like keeping equipment in good repair, and adjust its budget priorities accordingly.

    *I’m not too sure about the Trump Aministration.

  48. 48.

    maeve

    When I was growing up in Champaign-Urbana Illinois we did have missiles in the 4th of July parade (courtesy of the neaby Chanute Airforce base). It was noticable from probably the 1st time I saw I went to that parade (late 60s) to the last (mid 70s) they disappeared. Also remember the 1st time the LBTQ float was in the parade and they had to make sure it was several blocks separate from the Xtian float.

  49. 49.

    Aleta

    President Ford’s press secretary writes him to resign in protest over Ford’s pardon of Richard Nixon, this week 1974: https://twitter.com/BeschlossDC/status/1037818810655485958
    He doesn’t know how he could defend the pardon of Nixon even before he’d been charged, in the absence of pardons for men who evaded service as a matter of conscience during the Vietnam War and for Nixon’s associates.

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