North Korea appears to be planning a large military parade to be held in the coming months, with recent satellite imagery showing new activity at a parade training facility in the country’s capital.

The daily medium-resolution satellite imagery, provided by Planet Labs, reveals that a complex of what appear to be temporary structures began to be installed at Pyongyang’s Mirim parade training grounds sometime after April 18.

An area of empty field used as a military heliport, which has been filled with rows of temporary structures only ahead of military parades in the past, once again appeared covered with blue-roofed structures in an image taken on April 22, with imagery in the interim days unavailable.

The new activity follows what appeared to be preparations for an imminent parade in late January, which then halted suddenly amid North Korea’s nationwide coronavirus response. 

NK Pro also reported last week that, following a period of quiet, soldier formation marching drills resumed in mid-March at Mirim’s parade practice grounds, designed to mimic the streets of Pyongyang’s Kim Il Sung Square.  

There has not been an increase in such marching drills, however, in the available imagery taken in the last week, nor the appearance of military vehicles.

Based on past precedent, as well as a report from the Seoul-based Daily NK citing North Korean military sources, the country is expected to hold a major military parade to mark the 75th anniversary of the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK) foundation on October 10.

A similar buildup of temporary structures in the same area at Mirim appeared starting in mid-June 2015, according to historical Planet imagery, ahead of another major parade held on October 10 that year for the 70th anniversary holiday.

The area was used again to house a temporary structure complex for a shorter amount of time, around 8-9 weeks, ahead of the most recent military parade in Pyongyang in September 2018.

The structures, likely used to house soldiers practicing at the facilities, appeared around 10 weeks before another parade in April 2017, but were not installed ahead of the February 2018 parade amid other preparations at the site, perhaps due it being winter.

This week’s appearance of the structures would mark the earliest such start of preparations for a military parade in recent years, which could indicate the size of the coming parade.

A parade could also be held earlier than October, perhaps to mark the 75th anniversary of the liberation from Japanese colonial rule on August 15, but there has been much more enthusiastic promotion for the party foundation holiday in state media so far this year.

One expert told NK Pro in January that North Korea’s next military parade will be a chance for Kim Jong Un to show off it’s much-touted “new strategic weapon.”

The increase in activity at the military parade training grounds in Pyongyang comes as the country announced this week it was “intensifying” COVID-19 prevention efforts and keeping up sanitizing and quarantine measures. 

Such tightly-packed temporary structure complexes — potentially a concern if there are indeed individuals infected with the novel coronavirus despite the government’s continued claims to the contrary — also typically appear in the vicinity of large construction sites across the country.

The structures are still standing surrounding the Wonsan-Kalma beach resort on the east coast a week after the project’s missed deadline, as well as in the capital near the active construction site of the new Pyongyang General Hospital.

Edited by Oliver Hotham