SEOUL: North Korean state television began broadcasting footage of a military parade on Tuesday, opening with shots of skydivers landing in Pyongyang's Kim Il Sung square, and army trucks lined up in the streets.
The official KCTV's famous anchor Ri Chun Hi announced the start of the program, which will show edited footage of a parade to mark the 90th anniversary of the founding of the Korean People's Revolutionary Army.
Highly edited footage showed thousands of uniformed soldiers marching into the square, some in full battle dress and carrying their weapons as if entering combat.
“This is really a new presentation,“ Jeongmin Kim, the lead correspondent of Seoul-based specialist site NK News said in a live stream commentary on the parade broadcast on YouTube.
She said the state media footage combined video of the parade with what appeared to be pre-recorded segments.
Until 2017, North Korea broadcast military parades live, but after what South Korea's Yonhap news agency said was a glitch with a vehicle, they switched to delayed, edited broadcasts.
North Korea recently released a heavily-edited video of what it claimed was a successful test of its Hwasong-17 intercontinental ballistic missile, although Seoul and US officials later said it was actually a test of a less advanced missile.
North Korea stages military parades to mark important holidays and events, often featuring thousands of goose-stepping troops followed by a cavalcade of armoured vehicles and tanks and culminating with the key missiles Pyongyang wants to display.
Observers closely monitor these events for clues on North Korea's latest weapons development. - AFP