North Korea’s latest video of its ballistic missile launch is a show of strength both in terms of military and the country’s ruling dynasty, experts on the secretive country said on Saturday (November 19), Reuters reports.
Pyongyang launched its Hwasong-17 ballistic missile on Friday (November 18) drawing condemnation from around the world and especially from world leaders gathered in a Bangkok for a regional economic summit.
University of North Korean studies, Yang Moo-jin said that the Friday launch made up for the failure on November 3 and to show the North's technology is improving.
“Also in terms of military strategy, it was intended to prove that they would go with real action, instead of empty words, when it comes to the extended deterrence stance by South Korea, USA and Japan,“ he said.
KCNA reported Kim said threats from the United States and its allies pursuing a hostile policy prompted his country to "substantially accelerate the bolstering of its overwhelming nuclear deterrence." Yang said Kim is likely keep his rhetoric to go.
In the heavily-produced launch video with dramatic music and video effects, leader Kim Jong Un also appeared with his daughter. Still photographs showed him hand-in-hand with his unnamed daughter overseeing the launch and later, celebrating with his wife and sister as well as officials.
"By showing some quality time with his daughter, it looked like he wanted to showcase his family as a good and stable one and to show himself as a leader for normal people. Then at the same time, it also presented her as a member of ‘Paektu bloodline’ that cannot be replaced by others. Those were all calculated in these scenes," Yang said.
Mt Paektu is where Kim's father was believed to be born. The mountain holds important mythological, cultural and nationalistic significance to North Koreans and is where the ruling family claims its roots.
Her unexpected presence also fits a trend of Kim "normalizing" politics inside the regime and the dynamics around his position as supreme leader, analysts said, and raises the prospect that leadership of the totalitarian state could pass to a fourth generation of Kims.
