The visit came amid suggestions North Korea is preparing to carry a massive military cortege in the capital, Pyongyang, where it could showcase the rearmost tackle of a growing nuclear munitions program that stokes the concern of its neighbors and the United States. In her fourth public appearance, Kim’s son Kim Ju Ae, believed to be 9 or 10 times older, stood nearby with her father as he shook the hands of elderly officers and sat next to him at a table. Judges say Kim’s decision to bring his son to public events tied to his service is to remind the world he has no intentions to freely surrender his nuclear munitions, which he supposedly sees as the strongest guarantee of his survival and the extension of his family’s dynastic rule. North Korea’s sanctioned Korean Central News Agency said Wednesday that Kim visited the lodging of the Korean People’s Army’s general officers with his son. He later gave an encouraging speech to colors at a feed, praising them for maintaining the “strongest army in the world” despite external difficulties.
The visit came a day after Kim presided over a meeting with his top military brass and called for an expansion of combat exercises aimed at stropping war readiness, as he looks to escalate an formerly instigative run in munitions demonstrations in the face of pressures with his neighbors and Washington. State media prints showed military officers saluting at the feed, which appeared to be held at Pyongyang’s Yanggakdo Hotel.
Kim and his son dressed likewise in black suits and white dress shirts and held hands as they walked down a red carpet alongside Kim’s woman, Ri Sol Ju. During a major political conference in December, Kim called for an “exponential increase” of the country’s nuclear warheads, mass product of battleground political nukes targeting “adversary” South Korea and the development of more important multinational ballistic dumdums that could reach the international United States.
