North Korea held a military parade Sunday to mark its 70th birthday but apparently did not display its longer-range ballistic missiles — including those capable of hitting the U.S. — media reports and photos showed, amid what could be a move by Pyongyang to demonstrate seriousness about a pledged shift in focus from its nuclear weapons program to its economy.
A contingent of foreign journalists were invited to watch the parade, and reports said that troops, artillery and tanks made their way past leader Kim Jong Un in Pyongyang’s Kim Il Sung Square but that the largest missiles shown were short-range battlefield devices.
This contrasted sharply with the last military parade in February, when the North, in a thinly veiled threat to the U.S., displayed what appeared to be intercontinental ballistic missiles including the Hwasong-15, which experts say is capable of delivering a nuclear warhead to any city in the continental United States.
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