North Korea threatens to raze USA military bases in South Korea

North Korea has a habit of fueling tensions to increase the rewards it might extract from the outside world if it desists.

North Korea staged a massive military parade in Pyongyang on Saturday to mark the 105th birthday anniversary of its late founder Kim Il-sung, a holiday known as the Day of the Sun. Wearing a black suit, Kim returned a salute by goose-stepping soldiers marching through the square, showed the TV footage.

Tension has been building since Kim Jong Un announced in his New Year's message that the country was close to testing an intercontinental ballistic missile.

State television showed what appeared to be several KN-08 and KN-14 missiles rolled out on trucks at the parade.

During the parade, North Korea unveiled for the first time what is presumed to be a new intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM).

Other military hardware at the parade included tanks, multiple rocket launchers and artillery, as well as a solid-fuel missile created to be fired from submarines.

In a statement on official news agency KCNA, the North's Korean People's Army said Mr Trump had "entered the path of open threat and blackmail against the DPRK".

"We will respond to an all-out war with an all-out war and a nuclear war with our style of a nuclear attack", Choe said during the parade in the North Korean capital of Pyongyang, which was also attended by Kim Jong Un. He added that North Korea will keep building up its nuclear arsenal in "quality and quantity" and said Pyongyang is ready to go to war if that's what Trump wants.

Other senior officials joining Kim at the podium included Kim Won Hong, who the South Korean government had said earlier this year was sacked from his job as state security minister, presumably over corruption. South Korea has a spotty record of tracking developments in North Korea, as information about the secretive, authoritarian state is often impossible to confirm. Coal sales are an important source of revenue for Kim Jong Un's government, and the US says China has turned back some shipments in recent days.

He passed the leadership to his son, Kim Jong Il, who in turn passed it to Kim Jong Un.

The country under his watch has been aggressively pursuing a goal of putting a nuclear warhead on an ICBM capable of reaching the continental United States.

Trump posted a tweet Tuesday in which he said the North is "looking for trouble" and reiterated his call for more pressure from Beijing, North Korea's economic lifeline, to clamp down on trade and strengthen its enforcement of United Nations sanctions to persuade Pyongyang to denuclearize.

NORTH Korea has accused Donald Trump of "troublemaking" with "provocative" tweets and warned "thermonuclear war may break out any moment".

North Korea conducted two nuclear tests previous year alone, advancing its goal to make nuclear weapons small enough to fit on long-range missiles.

The show of strength comes amid mounting tension, with a U.S. aircraft carrier group steaming towards the region.

US retaliatory strikes against Syria over a chemical weapons attack on civilians, coupled with Trump dispatching what he called an "armada" of ships to the region in a show of force, touched off fears in South Korea that the United States was preparing for military action against the North.

Concern has grown since the US Navy fired 59 Tomahawk missiles at a Syrian airfield last week in response to a deadly gas attack.

The United States a few days ago dispatched what Trump called an "armada" of ships in a show of force, including an aircraft carrier, into waters off the peninsula amid fears that North Korea was preparing another round of nuclear or missile tests.

In addition, the US military has been conducting large-scale military exercises with South Korean forces, drills that the North considers provocative.

China issued a stern warning Friday to both the United States and North Korea, urging them not to push their recriminations to a point of no return and allow war to break out on the Korean Peninsula.