North Korea has staged mass rallies of orchestrated support for its young ruler, Kim Jong-un, who celebrates his birthday today amid a build-up to Pyongyang’s expected first intercontinental ballistic missile test.
Kim marked the new year with a speech boasting his regime was close to launching a missile that could one day target the US mainland armed with a nuclear warhead. Now his birthday, on which he is believed to turn 33, provides the dictator with a platform to make good his pledge. Regime watchers have expressed fears that last week’s flag-waving celebrations were organised as a show of support for an imminent test.
Should Kim give the order for a test today, he would be mocking Donald Trump, the president-elect, who responded to the