Pandemic no obstacle for Kim Jong Un's pompous North Korea parade

North Korea held a massive parade in Pyongyang, showing off its military might, despite the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

During the parade the country unveiled a new submarine-launched ballistic missile, in a calculated show of strength days before Joe Biden's inauguration as U.S. president.

The display came after the eighth congress of the ruling Workers' Party, where leader Kim Jong Un decried the U.S. as his country's "foremost principal enemy."

A grinning Kim oversaw the parade, wearing a black leather coat and fur hat as he watched mounted cavalry, specialist infantry, artillery and tanks roll through Kim Il Sung Square.

The troops' breath condensed in the cold winter air and none of the thousands of participants were seen wearing masks.

Aircraft flew overhead forming the party symbol.

"The world's most powerful weapon, submarine-launch ballistic missile, entered the square one after another, powerfully demonstrating the might of the revolutionary armed forces," the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said.

Four of the submarine-launched balistic missiles with black-and-white cones were driven past, footage on state television showed, and Park Won-gon of Handong Global University in the South described them as "the North's ultimate nuclear weapon."

North Korea has shown off earlier, smaller submarine-launched ballistic missiles before, and broadcast footage of a test launch, but it was not clear whether they were fired from a submarine or an underwater platform.

A working submarine-launched ballistic missile on a nuclear-powered submarine would be a strategic game-changer, enabling Pyongyang to launch a surprise attack from close to the U.S. or carry out a strike even if its land-based forces had been destroyed.

At the Worker's Party of Korea's eighth congress, Kim said his nation had completed plans for a nuclear submarine, but any such vessel is likely to be years away from going into service.

It is also never certain whether Pyongyang is displaying actual missiles or models at its set-piece events.

Analysts say North Korea is using the party meeting and military display to send the incoming administration in Washington a finely calculated message of strength in an attempt to extract concessions.

The state Korea Central News Agency said the parade included rockets with a "powerful striking capability for thoroughly annihilating enemies in a preemptive way outside the territory" – implying a range extending beyond the Korean peninsula.

Pyongyang did not display any of its intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), unlike at its previous parade in October, when it revealed a huge new ICBM on an 11-axle vehicle that analysts said was the largest road-mobile, liquid-fueled missile in the world.

North Korea has been developing submarine-launched ballistic missile systems for years.

Acquiring an operational system would alarm its rivals and neighbors because missiles fired from under water are harder to detect in advance.

Still, Kim Dong-yub, an analyst at Seoul’s Institute for Far Eastern Studies and a former military official who participated in inter-Korean military talks, said the North’s presumably new submarine-launched missiles could possibly be engineering mockups that require further development before they are ready to be tested and deployed.

While Kim Jong Un vowed during the congress to develop nuclear-powered submarines capable of firing nuclear-armed ballistic missiles, it would take “considerable time” for North Korea to overcome financial and technological difficulties and produce such systems, the analyst said.

It’s unclear whether North Korea is fully capable of developing such systems. While the country is believed to have accumulated at least dozens of nuclear weapons, outside estimates of the exact status of its nuclear and missile program vary widely.