Kim Opens Shop Amid 'Fake Missile' Claim

Kim Jong-Un, North Korea's leader, has been filmed on a walkabout of a supermarket in Pyongyang amid fresh questions about the country's missile capacity.

State TV showed footage of Kim, accompanied by military officials and dozens of other dignitaries, inspecting the produce - said to include goose, turkey and quail.

The second floor of the three-storey shop has a restaurant serving steak, according to the agency report.

The goods reportedly on offer may come as a surprise in a country known for the famines that ravaged it in the 1990s and its crumbling economy, deprived of Soviet aid.

Meanwhile, analysts who have studied photos of new North Korean missiles showcased recently at a lavish military parade say they were unconvincing fakes, casting further doubt on the country's claims of military prowess.

Earlier this month, the country launched a long-range rocket in what its officials called a failed attempt to put a satellite into space.

Although the rocket broke into pieces shortly after lift-off, the UN Security Council condemned the launch as a violation of resolutions prohibiting North Korea from engaging in nuclear and missile activity.

Since the failure, Pyongyang's top military leaders have made several boastful statements about its weapons capabilities.

Vice Marshal Ri Yong Ho has claimed that his country is capable of defeating the United States "at a single blow."

And North Korea has said it can use "special actions" that would reduce South Korea's government to ashes within minutes.

But analysts say the weapons displayed at the parade appear to be a mishmash of liquid-fuel and solid-fuel components that could never fly together.

Undulating casings on the missiles suggest the metal is too thin to withstand flight.

"There is no doubt that these missiles were mock-ups," Markus Schiller and Robert Schmucker, of Germany's Schmucker Technologie, wrote in a paper posted recently on the website Armscontrolwonk.com that listed those discrepancies.

"It remains unknown if they were designed this way to confuse foreign analysts, or if the designers simply did some sloppy work."

The missiles, called KN-08s, were loaded onto the largest mobile launch vehicles North Korea has ever unveiled.

Pyongyang gave them special prominence by presenting them at the end of the parade, which capped weeks of celebrations marking the 100th anniversary of the country's founding father, Kim Il-Sung.