North Korea’s powerful military has held a mass rally to pledge loyalty to the country’s new chief Kim Jong-Un, vowing to become “rifles and bombs” to protect him, official media said Tuesday. The North also announced a rare amnesty for prisoners as the untested young leader tries to build support.
Service members promised to “become rifles and bombs to serve as Kim Jong-Un first-line lifeguards and Kim Jong-Un first-line death-defying corps”, the official KCNA news agency said. The regime moved quickly to proclaim Jong-Un, aged in his late 20s, as its new chief after the sudden death of his father and supreme leader Kim Jong-Il on December 17.
It has appointed the son, who is ranked a general but has no known active military experience, supreme commander of the 1.2 million-strong military. On Sunday state media showed Jong-Un driving a tank and giving orders to artillery, navy and air force units, in an apparent attempt to bolster his credentials with the world’s fourth-largest armed forces.
KCNA said armed forces chief Ri Yong-Ho read the pledge of loyalty to Jong-Un at Monday’s rally in Pyongyang of the three branches of the military, which ended with a march past. The message pledged to “wipe out the enemies to the last one if they intrude into the inviolable sky, land and seas of the country even 0.001 mm”, it said.
