Video of bare-chested North Korean soldiers doing martial arts in front of Kim Jong-un goes viral
- Soldiers smashed bricks and glass in front of Kim Jong-un at a military exhibition at which the North Korean leader vowed to build an ‘invincible’ army
- There has been interest in the workings of the secretive state since the Netflix hit Crash Landing on You, starring celebrity Hyun Bin as a North Korean soldier
The video released by the North’s state media started with three soldiers, all shirtless, putting their bare hands on bricks before uniformed colleagues hit the top of their hands with mallets. The bricks shattered but not their bones, sparking applause from the audience.
The next scene shows soldiers with bricks on their stomachs or on their heads. Hammers shatter the bricks but the troops escape unscathed.
Two soldiers are then seen facing each other and pushing an iron bar between them with their necks, until the bar yields and bends.
The most dramatic stunt involved a soldier who broke out of a chain, broke two bottles and lay bare-chested on the glass shards, and then had a cement block placed on his stomach, which was smashed by a mallet.
“These soldiers, embraced and raised by our party, have demonstrated to the whole world the strength, bravery and morale of the Korean People’s Army,” newsreader Ri Chun-hee commented over the footage.