“We are only holding a military parade in the capital city, not military exercises targeting anybody nor launch of anything. Why do they take trouble craning their neck to follow what’s happening in the north,” Kim said in a statement published by North Korea’s state-run news agency, KCNA.
Kim’s comments were published as an important week-long North Korean political event, the Eighth Workers’ Party Congress, came to a close. The Congress is held for North Korea’s rulers to gather and reflect on successes and failures in years past and set an agenda for the near future. They’re typically held every five years or so, but Kim’s father and predecessor — Kim Jong Il — stopped holding them after 1980. Kim Jong Un revived the gatherings in 2016.
Experts had speculated that North Korea might mark the end of the Congress with a military parade, but as of Wednesday afternoon on the Korean Peninsula, North Korean state media had not released any images or video of such an event.
South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said on Monday, however, that it had detected signs of a military parade taking place in North Korea on Sunday night. North Korea will often release slickly produced propaganda videos of these events rather than airing them live.
Kim Yo Jong appeared to confirm that a parade had taken place while mocking the South for wasting its time, even though these parades offer valuable clues about the notoriously secretive country’s weapons systems. Kim also argued that Seoul’s spying was indicative of its “hostile approach toward the fellow countrymen in the north.”
“Do they really have nothing else to do but let their military body make ‘precision tracking’ of the celebrations in the north?” she said.
Kim was photographed attending Congress meetings, meaning it’s unlikely she has been purged. North Korean state media aired peculiar footage with her wearing what appeared to be heels and a skirt in the frigid weather. However, she was seen walking off to the side — not in a row alongside other officials and her brother, as she’s often seen doing.
All of this points to the possibility…
Go to the news source: North Korea’s Kim Yo Jong calls South Korean government a ‘truly weird group’ as…
