North invites China, Russia as first post-Covid guests

North Korea invited a Russian military delegation to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Korean War armistice, Pyongyang’s state media reported Tuesday.

The recently renovated Sino-Korean Friendship Tower in Pyongyang, photographed on June 29 by the North's state-controlled Korean Central News Agency [NEWS1]

A Russian military delegation led by Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu is set to visit North Korea to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Korean War armistice, Pyongyang’s state media reported Tuesday.

The report was confirmed by Moscow’s defense ministry the same day.

The announcement follows an earlier report by Pyongyang’s state media that the North has invited high-ranking members of China’s government and ruling party, also to join the regime’s armistice commemorations.

The Russian and Chinese delegations are Pyongyang’s first official guests from abroad since it closed its borders at the beginning of the worldwide Covid-19 pandemic in January 2020.

The group headed by Shoigu is scheduled to visit North Korea from Tuesday to Thursday, according to Russia’s defense ministry.

“This visit will help strengthen Russian-North Korean military ties and will be an important stage in the development of cooperation between the two countries,” the ministry said on Tuesday.

The United States in recent months has accused North Korea of supplying arms to Russia in support of the latter’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine, which the North has denied.

The Chinese delegation to North Korea will be led by Li Hongzhong, first vice chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress and a member of the Chinese Communist Party's Politburo, according to the state-controlled Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).

The invitation to Chinese officials to attend the North’s armistice commemoration was extended by the Central Committee of the North’s ruling Workers' Party and government, KCNA said.

Entry to the North from abroad all but ceased when neighboring China reported the first known outbreak of Covid-19, and even the North’s own diplomats have been barred from returning home since the pandemic started.

Amid the regime’s self-imposed blockade, defectors from North Korean regions bordering China have reported mounting difficulty in finding food and other vital supplies previously obtained through cross-border smuggling, and the regime has since constructed new physical barriers along its previously porous land border with China, according to satellite images recently analyzed by Reuters.

Pyongyang celebrates the signing of the armistice on July 27, 1953, as a national holiday, which it calls the “Day of Victory in the Great Fatherland Liberation War.”

According to KCNA, celebrations in Pyongyang marking the 70th anniversary of the armistice “will be held in a grand manner that will go down in history,” adding that it will serve as “a meaningful occasion to powerfully boast the unwavering belief and will of all people, soldiers and new generations who will continue to take the past 70 years of glory of shielding victory to the next 700 and 7,000 years.”

Satellite photographs of Pyongyang taken in recent weeks show preparations for a large-scale parade are underway, presumably to mark the holiday.

In its official narrative of the war, the North claims that the Korean War began with a U.S. invasion of its territory that it repelled.

But the opening of classified Soviet archives in 1991 shows that North Korea’s founder Kim Il Sung received approval and support to invade South Korea from Soviet leader Joseph Stalin in April 1950 as well as from Chinese leader Mao Zedong in May, about a month before he ordered the North’s military to launch a surprise attack across the 38th parallel.

The North’s official narrative also plays down the wartime role of China’s People’s Volunteer Army, which carried out most of the fighting after it intervened to prevent the collapse of Kim’s regime following U.S. General Douglas MacArthur’s successful amphibious landing operation at Incheon in September 1950.

In China, where the war is officially known as the “War to Resist U.S. Aggression and Aid Korea,” the eventual stalemate between the People’s Volunteer Army and the U.S.-led United Nations force is seen as a proud turning point in the country’s so-called “century of humiliation” at the hands of foreign powers.

BY MICHAEL LEE [lee.junhyuk@joongang.co.kr]