North Korea marks 65th anniversary of its founding with huge military parade

North Korea has marked the 65th anniversary of its founding with a huge military parade.

The country held its second mass parade in little more than a month, with leader Kim Jong-un presiding over a display of goose-stepping paramilitary troops, marching bands and flower-waving civilians.

At the start of the ceremony, tens of thousands of guards gathered in tight formation in Pyongyang’s Kim Il-sung Square, with hundreds of thousands more civilians in the background carrying brightly colored flowers in the pattern of a giant national flag.

Kim Jong-un’s arrival on the viewing platform with senior party and military officials was greeted with the usual thunderous applause and cries of Mansei.

Leading the parade were the Worker-Peasant Red Guard – a civilian militia with an estimated strength of more than three million active members.