Video of bare-chested North Korean soldiers doing stunts for Kim Jong-un goes viral

A video of bare-chested North Korean soldiers performing extreme stunts before leader Kim Jong-un and his sister Kim Yo-jong has gone viral on the web.The staged fight was part of a defense development exhibition in Pyongyang on Monday - a show of the ruling party's strength that included flight stunts by combat pilots, a weapons display, and a series of daring martial feats by the North Korean army, according to state media KCNA. Soldiers at the exhibition screamed war cries as they barreled through concrete slabs, split rows of bricks in half with their elbows, and performed sprinting dropkicks in a state broadcast that aired Tuesday.

In a video of the broadcast, tweeted by Martyn Williams, a Stimson Center fellow who researches North Korea, the soldiers are seen progressing to acts beyond martial arts, like bending a metal rod with their necks. The video also showed a soldier lying on a bed of glass shards before another soldier places a concrete slab on his stomach and sledgehammers it into pieces.Kim, his younger sister Kim Yo-jong and several other military officials were in the audience.The display came after Mr Kim vowed to make his country’s military “invincible” and called out the US and South Korea for persistent hostilities.Sending mixed signals during his speech, the North Korean leader said the primary objective was to give North Korea an “invincible military capability” that no one would dare challenge, but that it should not be seen as threatening war with its neighbour South Korea or the US.The country also showed off its latest addition to its ballistic arsenal by unveiling a Hwasong-8 missile armed with a hypersonic glide vehicle. The missile was earlier spotted in images from its test in late September