Instead of launching a missile, North Korea throws a party

South Korean officials predicted that such a missile test was almost certain to happen soon

North Korea marked its government’s 69th anniversary not with another missile test, as many had feared, but with a gala party for the scientists involved in carrying out the country’s most powerful nuclear test yet last week, the state-run news media reported on Sunday.

The country’s leader, Kim Jong-un, celebrated the national holiday on Saturday by bringing his nuclear scientists and engineers to Pyongyang, the capital, and holding a banquet.

On their way from the country’s underground nuclear test site in northeast North Korea to Pyongyang, the technicians had been cheered by people who poured out to see them passing by, the