Since taking power in 2011, Mr. Kim has staged more than a dozen military parades, using them to display his nuclear arsenal and to boost the morale of his people, who have suffered under international sanctions and food shortages.
The new missile disclosed on Wednesday was likely “a mock-up of a solid-fuel ICBM,” said Kim Dong-yub, a North Korean weapons expert at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul. “The canister may have been empty, but we cannot dismiss it as blustering. North Korea has often shown mock-ups in parades before testing the actual missiles.”
Mr. Kim did not deliver a speech at the military parade on Wednesday, as he has often done in the past. He did, however, attend with his daughter, according to North Korean media. The young girl, Ju-ae, is the only one of Mr. Kim’s children to appear with him in public.
Her frequent recent appearances in state media have triggered speculation among analysts that she was being groomed as Mr. Kim’s successor. Her father has taken her mainly to military-related events.
Since Mr. Kim’s talks with President Donald J. Trump fell apart in 2019, North Korea, with one of the largest standing armies in the world, has renounced diplomacy with the United States and doubled down on weapons development. Last year, it launched at least 95 ballistic and other missiles, a record.
U.S. and South Korean officials have said for months that the North was readying another nuclear test as well, the country’s seventh.
When U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III and his South Korean counterpart, Lee Jong-Sup, met last month in Seoul, the allies agreed to expand their joint military drills to demonstrate their combined deterrence against the North.
When Mr. Kim presided over a meeting of his ruling Workers’ Party’s Central Military Commission this week, he exhorted his country to expand military drills and perfect “the preparedness for war.”
