North Korea News Podcast by NK News - Unpacking North Korea’s military parade, from foreign guests to new weapons

Episode Date: October 14, 2025

This week, Korea Risk Group Executive Director Jeongmin Kim and Senior Analytical Correspondent Colin Zwirko unpack North Korea’s military parade in Pyongyang for the 80th anniversary of the Workers’ Party of Korea.  They explore how the event demonstrated both a commitment to spectacle and restraint, featuring more than 100,000 soldiers but fewer weapons in years […]

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Do I see nods? That's true. Okay. And I'm joined here in the studio today. We've got a special group of three here, a triumvirate. I've got Jong Min Kim and Collins Worker. Welcome back on the show. We're here to talk about a parade that they had in Pyongyang over the weekend.

I watched some of it. I was on a bus coming back to Seoul from Munggong, so I watched that. Oh, you went to Mungiang. I went to, first time ever, a lovely place. I recommend it to everyone. But, you know, you don't want to miss out on a parade. So I did use up all my phone data to watch this thing. Worth it?

Yeah, yeah, I would say so. It was a, I don't know, was it a, Colin, you've seen a lot of parades. Was it a disappointment or was it on a par with previous ones? I mean, this was for the 80th anniversary of the founding of the Korean Workers Party or the Workers Party of Korea? Was it of a standard that you've come to expect? from North Korea? Yes, North Korea's had, this is their eighth military parade in the last five years.

Okay. Six of those were normal size. Two of them were paramilitary parades. Does that mean bigger or smaller? Paramilitary parades are smaller and more civilian-focused. They had the things like the water truck turned into a missile launch or something like that. But this one was a normal military parade celebrating the 80th anniversary of the workers' party officially. And so I would kind of compare it to the 2020 parade, which was for the same holiday.

That was during the pandemic, but it was, that was the biggest one. So if we compare throughout this whole five years, they kicked it off with a bang. That was the biggest parade. And then they had one in April, 2022, February, and July, 2023. And now this one's, I don't know, maybe I missed count a minute ago. But anyway, it was one of their smallest based on how many weapons. They rolled out into the square like missile launchers, but I think you can't characterize it as small. There were more formations of soldiers participating than in the last five years.

I haven't compared it yet to the, you know, they have held military parades all the time since Kim Jong-gang came to power in late 2011. They had them almost every other year. So I'm not sure if it's the biggest in that regard or the smallest, but yeah, you know, over 100,000 soldiers, I think. Well, that is a lot of resources. John Wyn, what were the top line takeaways for you from this parade? So before we did the live stream, we did a survey of the clients and we got advanced questions regarding what the readers might be wondering about. And for those listeners who didn't see the live stream,

the live stream came out, was it about, was it 12 hours? Was it a day after the actual parade itself? Because North Korea edits it all into a package, including bits that were filmed before or from different angles and edits it. So it came out a bit after the actual parade. A little bit less than exactly a day. Okay. And before that, we received a few questions.

And the top take, basically, is we got a lot of questions whether or not there would be Ukraine mentioned directly. Yes. There was a Kursk mention, and the Ukraine-related units marched as well, as well as related assets to a certain extent. So that was definitely there. But when it comes to other questions that we received, like, will North Korea, Kim Jong-un mentioned U.S. and South Korea directly? Well, they mentioned Russia and China directly. They did not do that.

But Kim Jong-un did mention the enemy a couple of times. Foreign policy remark was also very subdued in line with how the row of columns of the weapons, it was smaller than usual, although I cannot say smaller, because there was the biggest ICBM that was rolled out. The Huasong 20? Yes. Right. Well, yeah, so we can't, okay, we can't call it in domestically or internally focused parade because they did have a lot of foreign guests. We'll come back to that in the moment.

But it was certainly a parade that, as you said, it didn't mention specifically who the enemies or the targets were. Right. But looking at the context of the assets and when Kim Jong-un was saying that, I was assuming that, of course, it's either U.S. or South Korea, but probably he did intentionally, did not mention anyone by name or Kim Jong-Gun sees U.S. and South Korea basically as a community of the shared fate. Right. But, yeah, it was interesting to see how. compared to all the past recent speeches that Kim Jong-in made about U.S. and South Korea, compared to those, it was very subdued. Also, when it comes to one of the other questions that we got the most before was Kimjuet, the daughter.

If she wasn't there, we did not spot her. Not even hiding behind a column or handing over an ashtray to daddy or something? Yeah, no, I didn't see her. And of course, Chesongi was there, the foreign minister. But also when it comes to the slogans and the rhetoric, there wasn't much focus on her. erratory succession or anything. Like last time, I think, we saw Pectu Hir Tong, the Bektu Bloodline's slogan.

This time around, we saw a lot of, you know, protect the party central, protect Kim Jong-un, sort of slogans, but we did not see anything related to the bloodline. Okay, but the party central or the party center or the center of the party, this is a phrasing that's been used over the decades,

and some people see it sometimes as code for the successor. I think back when, before Kim Jong-il was announced at the the party, I don't forget it was a Congress or a pleading back in 1980, he was referred to as the party center many times. Could this be a... I think so. I mean, of course, it is implied that it includes the entirety of the leadership,

including the family. But my sense was throughout the entire military parade, I think maybe Kim Jong-un was quite self-conscious of what he saw during China's military parade. I think he wanted to sort of create a vibe that looked like a normal state's normal military parade, you know, self-defense and, you know, very structured institutional sort of vibe, I think. On the succession thing, I think it's been, we've seen it for a couple of years now. There was some accelerating or heightening of the very obvious promotion of succession by Kim Jong-un with a lot of the Pektu bloodline and the daughter coming out a lot. And then we saw them,

we wrote about this before, how they kind of pulled it back a little bit in terms of it's overtness. So I think something happened a couple years ago where the cam and the leadership thought maybe we need to turn it down a bit, but they already established this idea. And I don't think anyone should, you know, think too deep into it. I mean, obviously they established this idea of succession. They're pushing it forward with this party center line. They've been doing it for for a few years now in terms of trying to bring that follow the party center slogan more than it, you know, it's always been around like you said, but they've been really promoting that slogan a lot. And then someday, everyone's going to realize, oh, that was meant to mean the daughter or whatever.

Was Kim Yo-Jong there? Yeah, but she's always in the background doing propaganda stuff. And before I forget, Jong-man, you just mentioned the unit that was sent to Ukraine, or rather to fight in Kursk against Ukraine. Does that mean that we saw actual battle-hardened war veterans in the parade, or is this just their unit but probably other soldiers? Yost Oliaments of Orix and the author of the Armed Forces

in North Korea who was one of the speakers at the webinar. And a full-up podcast guest? Yes, and he did mention that it does look like potentially they may have brought back a few people but it's just unclear just looking at the video but what Ritchini said the narrator said during the KCTV broadcast is that John Yongchan who commanded

what they call the Kursk liberation operation was there leading the march. So it does seem like they wanted to make it seem like the actual unit was there, but it was just really unclear. But certainly no men on crutches or on wheelchair, so no injured veterans. Yeah, that was something that Yost said that was interesting to me is just how North Korea has completely ignored the, or hidden any images of injured war vets.

Yeah. They celebrated the suicides and the dead a lot a couple of months ago. Right. or a month ago. And we saw Kim Jong-un mourning the dead too. Yeah, but they've really hidden any of the, all of the injured war veterans. But on the, they had that one unit,

or I mean the one formation, I mean, we don't confuse units, in the parade that were called the overseas fighters. And, yeah, led by Ri Chang-ho, who is one of the commanders, but that formation didn't present a flag. So although there was some thinking that maybe this is like a special

they've actually made a unit in the military focusing on overseas fighting I think it was just a collection of vets right because there was no flag because every unit normally has an insignia or a flag that we see when they're marching

I think they started with Russia and North Korea flag that was something but they didn't have a KPA flag that was what I mean yeah and also I think one of the commentators like we had a lot of military nerds

thank you everybody in the reply section and they mentioned that it's actually a song dedicated for a Russia-China, a Russia-North Korea friendship or something. Now, okay, in terms of hardware, was there anything surprising there or anything missing that we expected to see that was absent, Colin?

Yeah, there was, so there were 12 types of weapons rolled out, which is not an abnormal number for the last few years. It's just, like I said, fewer than in 2020. But each of those columns had fewer than maybe in years past, each of them was either four, five, or six vehicles, weapons vehicles. So it was a lot of conventional stuff. There was new stuff, like a drone launcher. Yes, I was going to ask about drones.

Yeah, so there were no other drones that were rolled out like on trailers like last time, and no flyovers because of the, maybe because of the rain. But it was a, it rained consistently and what seemingly heavily throughout the entire parade, am I correct? I don't know how heavy. Well, I don't think it was super heavy. I think sometimes, you know, when you look at the heavy, lights on the street and you can see the rain but you can't feel the rain. I think it was

kind of like at some points it was drizzling and then at some points it really was raining but nothing too heavy and it didn't seem to disrupt it too much. But it did, we saw them practicing flyovers at Sunchun Air Base and they didn't do any flyover so I assume that that was canceled. But they had a drone launcher in the parade. What's that look like? I didn't catch that actually. It's like it's on a truck and six of them are on one truck right? Yeah. It's like a, if you tilt a box, not like a normal launcher, but kind of the other way, to the side. Right. And that has six canisters or six boxes that launch these Israel-Herup-type drones.

Not, I mean, these are modeled after a known drone made by Israel. Because we saw in previous years they had some drones modeled after U.S. drones, right, like the Reaper. Sure, but these are smaller, like, I guess what they would call suicide drones. Right. And so that was a new weapon. And then they also had a new, like, people are comparing to, like, high Mars, this kind of modular weapon system where you can slot in either a ballistic missile or a canister of multiple rocket launchers. So that was new. And then they had some other mystery thing that looks like a multiple rocket launcher because it has like 22 tubes, but we don't know what come out of those tubes because it had a radar.

So Yost was saying maybe it could non-line of sight missiles, guided missiles, I mean, or maybe even loitering munition, like a. Tube launched a drone that North Korea has been showing off recently. So there was a lot of conventional stuff. And then at the end, they only rolled out three of the brand new Haasung 20, which I guess you can talk about, the ICBM on this 11-axle gigantic missile launcher. Right. And then before that, a few of a medium range nuclear-capable missile, an intermediate range, hypersonic nuclear-capable missile.

And then before that, some cruise missiles, which North Korea says are nuclear-capable missile. capable. So yeah, it was quite a mix of conventional and nuclear, but and Yost said, and we've talked about this before, I think, on the podcast that some of those weapons systems may still have been prototypes. Yeah, I mean, if you look throughout

the years, I think he wrote it in his article, but it was quite funny because he said, like, that, you know, these parades create this super long list of this encyclopedia of weapons we have to keep track of throughout the year, and not that many of them come to be deployed.

Although North Korea, honestly, is not very open about what they deploy. It's very hard to kind of get a handle on what's out in the field and what... Well, this is why we've got you with the satellite photography, right? The eye in the sky. Yeah, well, even, you know, that's not that easy to track. And so I think the main point that him and other analysts make is that these parades are not meant to be a showcase of what is deployed in the field. I don't know if China does it that way.

I don't know if Russia does it that way, but North Korea's way is to show what they are working on. And some version of these things probably is going to make its way into the field sometime soon. Okay. Now, we've already only got a couple of minutes left. So, Zhang Wyn, let's talk about who was up on the rostrum. Of course we had. Kim Jong-un was flanked on the rostrum by some foreign VIPs.

Who do you have there with him? So on the podium, there was Chinese Premier Lee Chang and the United Russia chairperson, Demi, Medvedev, who is also a former Russian president and also the Communist Party of Vietnam General Secretary, Tolem. I learned this pronunciation from Shreya's. But interestingly, right next to Kim Jong-in, it was the Chinese and Vietnamese officials, not the Russian.

I guess it's just because of the logistics, the what do you call the protocol, diplomatic protocol. The protocol, right, on rank level. And there was also, did we mention Laos? Laos was not there. Oh, right, okay. Was there earlier in the week but left before the parade, is that? Yeah, they visited midweek and then left. Got it. Okay.

There were also a lot of a lot more foreign VIPs in the audience than I've seen recently. A lot of visitors had come in from, for example, career friendship associations and other organizations worldwide. Yeah, there were a lot of foreign visitors compared to, you know, post-COVID. It was the biggest, I think, delegation visit for the military parade or Unification Ministry says. But it wasn't really clear, like, who was sitting where, honestly. I think the showing the foreign guests part in the KCTV was not as much as I expected actually I think they did that the KCTV was very focused on showing the journal foreign journalists pointing their cameras and then showing all the foreigners pointing their phones

all right that that I thought so they were they were telling the narrative of all the foreigners are here to look at the world global eye is all on us sort of I was there and am I imagining it or did I see Russian people in the crowd and on the roster and particularly excited when the Russian flag was marched in the parade. Medvedev was excited as well and he was pointing to the Ukraine column when they were marching by.

And then the ambassador Matagora was waving enthusiastically at the North Koreans who helped with their war against Ukraine. Right. Now, in terms of whether we see this the leaders from China, from Russia, from Vietnam. Are we to interpret this as some kind of a, I don't know,

a display of an axis, you know, an alliance? I mean, Vietnam's an interesting one to have there because I think Vietnam's coming to APEG as well. Well, exactly. And Vietnam has had military exercises with the United States, and Vietnam has good relations with South Korea. It was the first, on one of the first

to college, I mean, when he was... Right, so I found that an interesting... Did they say anything? Was there... Have we got anything, any readouts from Vietnam media about this, or... Anything like that? I'm fascinated. Perhaps in the coming day, we'll have something coming out about that. I know. I mean, it's been covered on our website. And speaking of South Korea before I forget,

there was one very direct but not mentioning by name was when the, I think were they border-related troops when they were marching by? So really the front line of the front line. Yeah, yeah. So the narration was referring to South Korea without calling it by name as the most hostile. style country. Yeah, there were a lot of new, newly participating formations.

And, yeah, one of them was this border guard unit, which had these nice new uniforms and everything. But their flag was like from 1949 or something. So I think they're just, you know, they do a lot of this re-symbolic tinkering. But it is, they look new. I think they're trying to present this, you know, you've always seen pictures of the guards at the border checkpoints on the, the inter-Korean border. And they look just like normal military.

but now they have these kind of different uniforms that, say, border on their uniform. And, yeah, we might see them out in the field now. Sorry to put you on the spot here, but what, did they use the word, what, Kukyong or something? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, national border, recognizing the demilitarized zone as an act. Okay, this is one more step in recognizing the division of Korea. Good point. New in the last few years, not new like today, but, but yeah, part of this.

interesting anti-unification thing yeah before we wrap up of course and I do want to mention that the entire video that with the live stream that you moderated Jongmin is available on YouTube for people to find right at the NK News channel with commentary on the side it was that came in live as it was going on and of course all the stories that we've mentioned today are written up on the website so people can go and look for the best analysis and the best reporting there but Colin back to the ICBM the Hwasong 20 you said there were three there in the parade tell us a bit about the Hwai passing 20, is it one of those solid fuel things that can be rolled out and launched almost

immediately? Yeah, well, yeah, so it's a solid fuel missile, mobile launcher. I think that the U.S. will be trying very hard to know where these are at all times. They're very slow, very lumbering. I think the idea is that if they can get it into a tunnel somewhere that hopefully the enemy doesn't know about, then they can roll it out of the tunnel, move it. a couple hundred yards or whatever to a spot that they've chosen that's ready for launching and then they'll launch it from there it's not going to drive you know super far from this hiding spot now let's hope that that day doesn't come jungman final comment from you um to me it was interesting that naval assets were missing from the parade okay i don't know why because i i thought that naval

was one of the best top developments that they wanted to focus on surface drones and undersea drones and things, yeah, that's interesting that they didn't bring that out. But is that new in recent military parades? No, I mean, they've really, they've always had the submarine-launched missiles part of their parade lineups, I think, I don't know, I wouldn't read too much into this because also he did a special visit to the new destroyer last week as part of the 80th anniversary Weapons Expo. I think they're just going to be promoting these in other ways.

And you can't rule out a destroyer. No. No, it's a bit heavy, isn't it? Yeah, even with an 11-axil carrier. And they did. And I think having that weapons expo last week took care of some of the missing items in the parade. They did have some of, they had a bunch of stuff at the expo that wasn't in the parade. And that's just, you know, Kim can celebrate them there, show them off there. You know, even the Laos leader who came to North Korea, didn't go to the parade, but he did go to the weapons expo.

And a lot of people presumably from abroad, not like normal civilians, but the special delegations visited the expo. so that was just another way to present it. Okay, well, that's where we're going to have to wrap it up today. Thank you very much, Zhongmin and Colin, for this extended short episode, and we'll look forward to seeing you next time. Thanks for having me. Thank you. Looking to stay informed about South Korea's fast-evolving political business and cultural landscape,

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