Pyongyang opens new chapter
PYONGYANG: North Korea opened a new chapter in its 68-year history with leader Kim Jong-un consolidating his power at a once-in-a-generation party congress that ended this week, although it remains to be seen how he will fill in the book’s empty pages and put his personal stamp on the country founded by his grandfather.
There were hardly any surprises at the Workers’ Party of Korea congress, held for the first time in 36 years. What really piqued the interest of seasoned observers of North Korean affairs was less what Mr Kim said than what he chose not to do.
The party event that concluded on Monday drew global attention both for its rarity and because of the ramped-up sabre-rattling from Pyongyang since the beginning of this year.
Since its fourth nuclear test in early January, or what it claimed was its first successful test of a hydrogen bomb, North Korea has carried out a wave of weapons tests and made bombastic threats against the United States and its allies.
The four-day congress saw Mr Kim rehashing the same old material when it came to justifying North Korea’s nuclear policy in defiance of international censure and sanctions.
Mr Kim, who assumed the new title of chairman of the party after having previously headed it as first secretary, made it crystal clear in his address at the congress that North Korea has no intention of rolling back its nuclear ambitions. As widely expected, Mr Kim said the ultimate guiding principle of his regime is to pursue building up the country’s nuclear force and developing its economy simultaneously.
His signature dual-track policy, known as the “Byungjin Line” adopted as national policy in 2013, was also incorporated into rules revised this time by the party.
However, contrary to speculation that was rife among experts and government officials of other countries, North Korea did not conduct another nuclear test ahead of the convention.
Also quite unexpectedly, Mr Kim, presumed to be 33 years old, kept most of the party’s familiar faces at the top of its hierarchy, instead of replacing these veterans, inherited from his late father Kim Jong-il’s regime, with younger officials loyal to him.
Shunji Hiraiwa, a professor at Japan’s Kwansei Gakuin University who is an expert on North Korea, said Mr Kim’s revamp of the party structure, such as having himself elected to the newly created post of chairman and setting up the Central Committee’s Executive Policy Bureau, reflect his desire to mould the political organisation in his own image in his fifth year in power.
But at the same time Mr Kim seems to have prioritised stability in governance, rather than subjecting the party to a capricious reshuffling of names for his own reasons, Mr Hiraiwa said.
While the party congress hardly yielded any eye-openers, Lee Seong-hyon, a research fellow at the South Korea’s Sejong Institute, advised that the international community analyse its outcomes in a “more subtle way”.
Mr Lee raised the possibility that Mr Kim, having declared North Korea’s acquisition of the status of a nuclear weapons state, may leverage it “as a justification to shift the nation’s attention to economic building”.