TO celebrate North Korea’s special children’s day, primary school children threw mock grenades, crawled under frames and threw themselves over fences, — all with imitation AK47s over their shoulders.

North Korean schoolchildren learning military skills to “beat down any enemies” were part of dictator Kim Jong-un’s Korean Children’s Union Day festivities at Pyongyang Number Four Primary School.

As they completed the obstacle course, a teacher said the military drill-style race was intended “to give the children the spirit to defend our country when they are grown up, and to prepare them physically and mentally to beat down any enemies while upholding the Songun (military-first) revolutionary leadership of the respected marshal”.

The “respected marshall” is a reference to Kim Jong-un, who this week laughed and clapped as he watched his fighter jets carry out war games.

Student Myong Hyon-Jong, whose favourite subject is mathematics, said she wanted to join the army when she grows up, to “safeguard the respected Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un with military power”.

“We have to prepare ourselves to defend our country,” the ten-year-old said.

Nuclear-armed North Korea is technically still in a state of conflict: the 1950-53 Korean War ended with an armistice rather than a peace treaty.

It considers itself at risk of invasion by the US — its justification for the atomic and missile programs that have seen it subjected to multiple rounds of United Nations Security Council sanctions — the latest of which came last week.

Since the beginning of 2016 Kim has overseen two nuclear tests and scores of missile launches as Pyongyang seeks to develop a missile that can deliver a warhead to the continental United States — something which President Donald Trump has vowed “won’t happen”.

Tensions soared earlier this year as his administration said that military options were being considered.

LESSONS IN LOYALTY

All North Korean children are automatically members of the Korean Children’s Union, whose uniform includes the red neckerchiefs of the Young Pioneers of other communist states.

It is one of the mechanisms through which loyalty to the authorities is instilled from an early age, and the anniversary of its foundation in 1946 is a June 6 public holiday, marked by sports days at schools across the country.

“On this occasion, all the people in the country are recalling with deep emotion the immortal feats performed by peerlessly great men,” the official Korean Central News Agency reported, referring to the North’s founder Kim Il-Sung and his successor Kim Jong-il, the grandfather and father of the current leader.

Under Kim, it said, schoolchildren “are being brought up to be pillars supporting Juche Korea” — a reference to its guiding “self-reliance” philosophy.

Once the contests were over, students danced in formation to songs including “We have nothing to envy in the world”, “Revolutionary Army Games” and “Our Thankworthy Sun”, which lauds Kim Jong-un.

“You should not forget the warm love and care of the great marshal Kim Jong-un,” the school’s headmistress told students and their families.

“Study hard to become great men in the future.”