North Korea’s Kim flaunts new ICBM able to reach US

Fresh from staking his place on the global stage at Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s parade of military firepower in Beijing last month, Kim oversaw a display starring his new solid-fuel intercontinental ballistic missile Friday at Pyongyang’s Kim Il Sung Square on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the ruling Workers’ Party. The ICBM was called the “Hwasong-20."

Chinese Premier Li Qiang, the country’s No. 2 official, and Russia’s ruling-party chief and former president, Dmitry Medvedev, were among the dignitaries to join Kim at the event, reuniting a loose anti-Western axis of nations. Top officials from Vietnam and Laos also attended.

“Our army should continue to grow into an invincible entity that destroys all threats approaching our range of self-defense," Kim said in a speech, according to a Saturday report by state media.

Kim has projected confidence in his nuclear program, with allies helping him circumvent international sanctions. Amid efforts to be recognized as a regional power, Kim hasn’t sat down with the U.S. president for talks since 2019.

President Trump, who met the North Korean leader three times during his first term, has expressed interest in another get-together. But Kim, the 41-year-old dictator, said last month that he would sit down with Trump only if the U.S. drops its policy of trying to get North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons.

An opportunity for a meeting could come soon, with Trump potentially meeting Xi in South Korea at the end of October. On Friday, Trump threatened to cancel the planned exchange with Xi, after trade tensions escalated between the two countries. Kim and Trump previously met at the Korean Demilitarized Zone, the heavily fortified border area separating North and South Korea.

A standout in the display on a rainy Friday evening was the public debut of the Hwasong-20 ICBM, a weapon mentioned by Kim for the first time shortly before his trip to Beijing in September. The missile appeared encased at the parade. North Korea first launched an ICBM—dubbed the “Hwasong-14"—in 2017.

The missile, though believed to still be in development, could give Kim a more powerful deterrent and greater leverage in any negotiations, with the U.S. mainland in range and a solid-fuel engine that would allow it to be deployed faster and make it harder to detect.

The parade included a long line of weaponry that Pyongyang has tested in recent years, including attack drones, rocket launchers and battle tanks.

Thousands of soldiers marched through downtown Pyongyang in the parade, a relatively small contingent representing the roughly 1.2 million troops of one of the world’s largest standing armies. The Russian delegation to the parade included the acting governor of Kursk, the Russian region where North Korean troops helped drive out Ukrainian forces.

The parade also featured troops goose stepping through the square led by a North Korean commander who fought in Russia. North Korea has provided troops, artillery shells and missiles for Russia’s war against Ukraine. The accuracy of the North Korean-produced missiles have been improved following lessons learned from the battlefield, Ukrainian intelligence officials have said.

Pyongyang unveiled an array of upgraded weapons at a defense expo last week, including a short-range ballistic missile equipped with a hypersonic glide vehicle.

At the expo, Kim threatened to take military measures to respond to a growing U.S. presence on the Korean Peninsula, accusing Washington of an arms buildup aimed at launching pre-emptive strikes. The U.S. military said in late September that it had permanently stationed MQ-9 reaper drones in South Korea to support surveillance and reconnaissance operations.

Write to Dasl Yoon at dasl.yoon@wsj.com