North Korea opens new defense museum featuring ICBMs, other advanced weaponry

North Korea has opened a new defense museum featuring a wide range of weaponry, including its new intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM), with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in attendance, state media reported on Tuesday.

The opening ceremony for the National Defense Revolution Museum took place on Sunday on the occasion of the Workers’ Party of Korea’s (WPK) 81st founding anniversary, which fell on Saturday, according to the Korean Central News Agency.

Kim inspected the museum with the party’s central leadership, including the secretaries of the WPK central committee and commanding officers of the North’s national defense ministry, among others. His wife and daughter, Kim Ju-ae, were also present.

Kim Jong-un touted the new defense museum as a “revolutionary treasure” that can only be possessed by the WPK and a “precious monument” that he said can only be built by the “state and people […] powerful enough to defend themselves.”

The North Korean leader emphasized that it was the WPK’s “due obligation” to build the defense industry into the most powerful in the world, adding that the country’s “juche-based weaponry” will be developed and completed alongside the museum’s scale and contents, the report said.

Juche, which signifies self-reliance, is the central ideology of the North Korean regime.

Photos disclosed by the North’s state media showed a range of weaponry, from personal combat gear to drones and missiles, displayed at the museum. They include the Hwasong-20 ICBM under development, a new submarine-launched ballistic missile and 600-millimeter super-large multiple rocket launchers.

Yonhap