SEOUL-- North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called for bolstering the country's military strength at an unprecedented pace, during a photo session with the participants of a military parade held earlier this week, Pyongyang's state media reported Friday.
Speaking on Thursday, Kim stressed that the prosperity of the North depends on a "powerful army" and noted "one can demonstrate one's dignity and honor only when one is strong," according to the North's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).
He added that suppressing the "increasingly brutal imperialist tyranny by force" requires its army to "grow stronger at an incomparably faster speed than that of the past history," the KCNA said in an English-language report.
Kim also praised the participants for glorifying the military parade as an event to be "specially recorded in history," saying that it has "made a clearer description of the prestige and greatness, high honor and rosy future of our state."
Top military officials attended the photo session, including Ri Pyong-chol and Ri Yong-gil, who both serve as vice chairman of the Central Military Commission of the ruling Workers' Party.
Kim last held such a mass photo session early last month with members of the Korean Children's Union.
The North held the nighttime parade Wednesday to celebrate the 75th founding anniversary of its armed forces, during which it displayed its key weapons, including Hwasong-17 intercontinental ballistic missiles.
Kim attended the event along with his wife, Ri Sol-ju, and apparent second child, Ju-ae. State media did not mention whether Kim delivered a speech during the event.
Meanwhile, commanding officers of the North's defense ministry and general officers of the Korean People's Army paid tribute at the Kumsusan Palace of the Sun, where the bodies of state founder Kim Il-sung and late leader Kim Jong-il are enshrined, the KCNA said in a separate report.
They pledged to follow current leader Kim Jong-un and to fully demonstrate the "tremendous might and heroic spirit of the armed forces," it added.
Kim was not seen at the mausoleum in photos released by the North's state-controlled media.
In regard to Ju-ae's presence at the parade, South Korea's unification ministry said the North appears to have made "considerable" efforts to highlight her at the event based on photos published by the country's state media.
Photos carried by the KCNA showed Ju-ae overseeing the parade with the North's leader at the reviewing stand and Kim smiling as she touched his cheeks. Her attendance has fueled speculation that she may be groomed as Kim's successor.
"It is too early to judge (the possibility of her succession), but the government will watch relevant situations, leaving all possibilities open," the ministry's deputy spokesperson Lee Hyo-jung told a regular press briefing.
Ju-ae, believed to be 10 years old, made her first public appearance in November last year, when she, along with her father, attended the firing of a Hwasong-17 intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM).
She also visited troops with her father earlier this week ahead of the army anniversary, seen in photos showing her taking a central position for a photo shoot at a banquet, surrounded by the country's top military brass.
The North's state media has recently begun calling her the "respected" daughter from the "beloved" or "the most beloved" one, in a possible indication of an elevation in her public status.
Despite her frequent appearance in state media, many observers see the possibility of Ju-ae becoming a hereditary successor as low, given the North's patriarchal society and the rumored existence of an eldest son among Kim's children.
They said Ju-ae's presence at military events appears to be aimed at justifying a possible fourth-generation succession of the Kim dynasty, and sending a message that the North's nuclear and missile programs will defend the security of the future generation.
Source: Yonhap News Agency