North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has been appointed general secretary of the Workers’ Party during the congress that is currently holding the only Asian country formation in Pyongyang, state news agency KCNA reported today.
The appointment was made on the sixth day of the congress (held on Sunday) when the general secretariat was restored, removed at the previous congress in May 2016, in which Kim himself was appointed president of the Workers’ Party.
For her part, the leader’s sister, Kim Jo-jong, has not been included in the list of alternate members of the party’s political bureau.
In turn, Jo Yong-won, deputy director of the party’s powerful Department of Organization and Orientation and considered one of the closest attendees to Kim Jong-un himself, has been elected as a member of the presidium of the political bureau, the party’s main decision-making body, replacing Pak Pong-ju.
I thus become one of the five most powerful figures at the top of the regime alongside the four other members of the presidium so far: Kim Jong-un himself, Choi Ryong-hae, Ri Pyong-chol and Kim Tok- hun.
In addition to the revision of the organization chart, the eighth congress of the Workers’ Party, the celebration this year has been surrounded by great secrecy by the regime, aims to establish a new five-year plan to stimulate the damaged North Korean economy.
In the course of the event Kim Jong-un further warned that the US remains the main enemy of the regime and indirectly urged the incoming Government of Joe Biden to propose new alternatives to resume dialogue on denuclearization, warning that the North Korean army prepares new weapons tests.
Meanwhile, the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) reported today in a statement that it has detected signs of the possible celebration on Sunday night (local time) of a military parade “related to the congress” in Kim Il -sung Square in Pyongyang.
South Korean and U.S. military authorities are closely monitoring the situation and do not rule out “the possibility that it is a trial,” the text adds.
Satellite images have shown in recent weeks the preparations for a parade that would serve to put an end to the congress, as happened in the previous appointment in 2016.
North Korean media have not yet indicated the date the congress will end, although they have reported that it will continue to hold it today, Monday.