It has appeared that Kim Jong Un has been trying to rule like his grandfather, Kim Il Sung, who placed more importance on the Workers’ Party than on the military, than his father, Kim Jong Il, who promoted a “military first” policy. The Korean Central News Agency also said Pyongyang will (quote) boost its self-defensive nuclear force in quality and quantity.
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The congress, which opened on Friday, has largely been seen as an elaborate coronation for the 33-year-old Kim, securing his status as supreme leader and confirming his legacy “byungjin” doctrine of twin economic and nuclear development.
Recalling the reaction of the government to 2014’s The Interview, CNN correspondent Will Ripley said from Pyongyang today, “North Koreans take very seriously comments made about their leader”, Kim Jung-un.
A group of BBC journalists were also detained, questions and expelled from the country due to their reporting while in North Korea, although they had been invited to the country on a different assignment. Kim Jong Il preferred using his own network of trusted individuals to get things done.
One of their number, the BBC s Rupert Wingfield-Hayes, on Monday fell foul of the authorities and was expelled from the country after an eight-hour interrogation.
When his colleagues, producer Maria Byrne and cameraman Matthew Goddard, realized Wingfield-Hayes was missing, they refused to board the plane.
The Korean Central News Agency said Monday that the congress was to enter its fourth day.
The objective of the red-themed get-together was, according to the AP, to “demonstrate Kim is firmly in control despite his country’s deepening global isolation over its nuclear weapons program”.
Mr Koh, who is now vice-head of the South’s state-run Institute for National Security Strategy, said the rarity of the Party Congress conferred real authority on the new role.
Over the next five years, North Korea should “fly the flag of victory” and become a “scientific and technological, economic and highly-civilized power”, Kim said. Officials have kept the foreign media busy with trips around Pyongyang to show them places it wants them to see.
O Ryong Il, secretary-general of the North’s National Peace Committee, said Wingfield-Hayes’ news coverage distorted facts and “spoke ill of the system and the leadership of the country”. The three were detained over the weekend and have been taken to the airport, it added. “Our republic is a responsible nuclear state that, as we made clear before, will not use nuclear weapons first unless aggressive hostile forces use nuclear weapons to invade on our sovereignty”, Kim said in an approximately three-hour speech that was broadcast on Sunday.
A BBC spokesman said four BBC staff remained in the country and he expected they would be allowed to stay.
With the official agenda completed, mass rallies will likely be held on Tuesday to mark its conclusion in a celebratory fashion.
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The BBC team had been working in North Korea for several days ahead of the party congress opening on Friday, accompanying a delegation of Nobel prize laureates conducting a research trip.
