Hours after North Korea tested a ballistic missile on Sunday, the country’s missile makers turned to another key task ordered by leader Kim Jong Un: providing new farm equipment to address chronic food shortages.

According to state media on Tuesday, the DPRK munitions industry put on a massive display of 5,500 “new” farm machines on Sunday covering the streets of central Haeju, located in the country’s “breadbasket” province of South Hwanghae. Kim Jong Un reportedly “gifted” the machines to local farms.

Haeju began organizing the thousands of pieces of equipment in the central square and surrounding streets over a week before Sunday’s ceremony, according to NK News analysis of satellite imagery.

Planet Labs imagery shows the machines slowly building in number between Sept. 18 and 23, suggesting authorities placed a priority on optics and ceremony over quickly delivering what state media has described as badly needed machinery. 

The Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said the machines were being presented at a “crucial time” for carrying out this year’s farming targets, while Korean People’s Army Marshal Ri Pyong Chol talked about how the machines were meant to “solve the people’s eating problem and the people’s living problem” in a speech at the ceremony. Ri is Kim Jong Un’s long-time right-hand man in the munitions industry. 

Ri urged the province’s farmers to “struggle for victoriously finishing this year’s farming, defending the Party Central Committee with increased grain production and turning all the farm villages into rich and modern ideal ones of socialism,” adding that the “Jaeryong and Yonbaek plains” are key regions that need help in the upcoming harvest. 

State TV on Tuesday presented drone shots of Haeju’s streets covered with meticulously placed machines organized by type, including “new-design efficient mobile rice combined threshers, small-sized rice harvesters, maize combined threshers and combination soil management machines.”  

The broadcast ended with scenes of farmers taking the machines home on trucks labeled with the names of counties in the province. 

NK News could not immediately determine the authenticity of state media claims that the machines were newly manufactured. Tuesday’s report also did not disclose the names of munitions industry-affiliated factories that it suggests produced the machines on display.

It’s unusual for authorities to promote the munitions industry so prominently at such an event, but Kim Jong Un signaled their larger role in the economy in his 2019 New Year Address, in which he said the munitions industry was busy producing “a variety of farm machinery” and other goods while “concentrating all efforts on economic construction.”

North Korean authorities regularly hold events where items such as tractors, trucks, TV sets and other small consumer goods are carefully laid out before lines of people and propaganda slogans thanking Kim Jong Un for his generosity. Sunday’s event appeared to be one of the largest such ceremonies ever. 

It also came on the same day the ruling party Politburo held a meeting to discuss an unspecified “crucial resolution” related to agriculture and solving chronic food shortages. Kim Jong Un did not attend that meeting, and it’s unclear if he attended the missile test earlier that morning since state media did not report on it.

Edited by Arius Derr