North Korean leader Kim Jong Un pledged to strengthen
his country’s nuclear arsenal as he delivered his closing address
to a top ruling party meeting, state television showed Wednesday,
days before Joe Biden takes office as US president.
Kim is looking to grab the attention of the incoming Biden
administration, analysts say, with his country more isolated than
ever after closing its borders to protect itself against the
coronavirus pandemic.
A nuclear summit between Kim and outgoing US President Donald
Trump in Hanoi in February 2019 broke down over sanctions relief
and what Pyongyang would be willing to give up in return.
June 30, 2019, US President Donald Trump and North Korea’s leader
Kim Jong-un stand on North Korean soil while walking to South Korea
in the Demilitarized Zone(DMZ), in Panmunjom, Korea. Brendan
Smialowski / AFP
“While strengthening our nuclear war deterrent, we need to do
everything in order to build the most powerful military,” Kim told
the Workers’ Party congress, footage broadcast on Korea Central
Television showed.
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Thousands of delegates and attendees — none of them wearing
masks — repeatedly rose to their feet in the cavernous April 25
House of Culture venue to interrupt his speech with applause.
Earlier in the eight-day meeting, which has lasted twice as long
as the previous gathering in 2016, Kim called the US “the
fundamental obstacle to the development of our revolution and our
foremost principal enemy”.
Its policy towards the North “will never change, whoever comes
into power”, he added, without mentioning Biden by name.
The North had completed plans for a nuclear-powered submarine,
he said — a strategic game-changer — and offered a shopping list
including hypersonic gliding warheads, military reconnaissance
satellites and solid-fuel intercontinental ballistic missiles
(ICBMs).
The North’s weapons programmes have made rapid progress under
Kim, and at a parade in October it showed off a huge new ICBM that
analysts said was the largest road-mobile, liquid-fuelled missile
in the world.
The change of leadership in Washington presents a challenge for
Pyongyang: Biden is associated with the Obama administration’s
“strategic patience” approach and characterised Kim as a “thug”
during the presidential debates.
The North, mean while, has called Biden a “rabid dog” that “must
be beaten to death with a stick”.
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Kim and Trump had a tumultuous relationship, engaging in mutual
insults and threats of war before an extraordinary diplomatic
bromance featuring headline-grabbing summits and declarations of
love by the outgoing US president.
Kim’s latest comments built on his rhetoric earlier in the
congress while leaving a door open for dialogue, said Hong Min of
the Korea Institute for National Unification in Seoul.
“It is a message to the US that it will continue to build up its
strategic arsenal unless the US changes its course on North Korea
policy,” he told AFP.
“If Washington treats it nicely, it will act nice, but if it
treats it harshly, it will act harshly too.”
– ‘Senseless’ –
The congress is the top ruling party gathering, a grand political
set-piece that reinforces the regime’s authority and can serve as a
platform for announcements of policy shifts or elite personnel
changes.
At the gathering, Kim was named the party General Secretary, a
title previously reserved for his father and predecessor Kim Jong
Il, in what analysts said was a move to reinforce his
authority.
The official KCNA news agency reported that the congress will be
followed on Sunday by a meeting of the Supreme People’s Assembly,
the North’s rubber-stamp legislature.
The North’s economy is struggling in the face of its
self-imposed coronavirus blockade, chronic mismanagement and
sanctions, and Kim repeatedly admitted to the party delegates that
mistakes had been made.
And his influential sister and close adviser Kim Yo Jong
indicated that a military parade had been scheduled to accompany
the congress.
In a statement carried by KCNA, she derided the “idiot”
authorities in Seoul for a “senseless” declaration this week by the
South’s joint chiefs of staff about a possible military parade in
Pyongyang that she said demonstrated a “hostile attitude”.
“We are only holding a military parade in the capital city, not
military exercises targeting anybody nor launch of anything.”
Kim Yo Jong had appeared to suffer a demotion at the party
congress, not being listed as a party central committee appointee
after previously being an alternate member.
But the issuing of a statement in her own name is an indication
she remains a key player in the North’s diplomacy, having been
behind its destruction of a liaison office on its side of the
border last year.
The South’s President Moon Jae-in brokered the talks process
between Kim and Trump, and said in his New Year address on Monday
that Seoul remained willing to talk to Pyongyang “at any time and
any place”, including online.
But since the process with Washington became deadlocked, the
North has repeatedly said it has no interest in discussions with
the South.
AFP
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