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North Korea's War Anniversary Spectacle
The nation goes into propaganda overdrive as it holds a huge celebration involving 150,000 people to mark the end of the war.
4:47am UK, Saturday 27 July 2013
Video: North Korea's Mass Propaganda Push Email
North Korea has marked the 60th anniversary of the truce that ended fighting in the Korean War with a massive celebration in the capital Pyongyang.
The country's leader Kim Jong-Un, flanked by China's Vice President Li Yuanchao, attended a spectacular display of acrobats, gymnasts and dancers at the 11th annual Arirang Festival.
Much of the seating in the city's 150,000-capacity May Day Stadium was taken up by performers who used a series of coloured cards to create moving images.
North Korea - which calls the annual event a "mass gymnastic and artistic performance" - celebrates the signing of the July 27 1953 armistice at the end of the war as a victory against the US and South Korea.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, China's Vice President Li Yuanchao, arrive for performance "Arirang", in Pyongyang Kim Jong Un attended the spectacular display
Sky's Asia correspondent Mark Stone, who was granted access to the reclusive country and attended the performance, said: "I've never seen anything quite like it.
"It's a stadium that seats 150,000 people. Consider the fact the Emirates Stadium in London seats about 60,000 people. It was an extraordinary celebration.
"The Arirang performance, as it's known, takes place every year, but this year is clearly much, much bigger because it's 60 years since the end of the Korean War.
"That's why we've been invited to North Korea, and, of course, is what the North Korean government wants us to see.
North Koreans perform during a mass gymnastic and artistic performance "Arirang" in Pyongyang Many performers took part in the extravaganza
"But what we're not able to see is what's going on outside Pyongyang.
"People who get to live in the city are the most loyal. But 60 or 70 miles from here there is a prison camp, with perhaps more than double the number of people who were in the stadium today.
"It seems like propaganda in overdrive. It was only four or five months ago that we were reporting on Kim Jong -Un's belligerence.
"He was threatening all out nuclear war, and there were suggestions then that he wasn't very stable - that those around him weren't convinced about his leadership.
Performers take part in a mass gymnastic and artistic performance "Arirang" in Pyongyang The night sky was lit up by fireworks
"But I don't get any sense of that now. I spoke to a senior diplomatic source in Pyongyang today and his view was that Kim Jong-Un was about as stable as he could ever be, and he sees no sign of this country collapsing anytime soon."
He added: "It's a very, very strange place. The cult of personality is what keeps it going. These people are cut off from much of the world.
"There is no internet here. People here can't ring outside the country, so they don't really know what's going on outside North Korea.
"They don't know, for example, that it was North Korea who invaded South Korea in 1950, and the sort of central pillar of what they believe is that it is the Americans and the South Koreans who have been pushing and threatening the North ever since that war.
