Under the organizational reshuffle, the number of presidium members of the political bureau of the party’s central committee rose from three to five.
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SEOUL, South Korea (AP) – North Korean state media on Wednesday released high-resolution headshots of more than two dozen top officials, including leader Kim Jong Un, that appear to be missing something Pyongyang-watchers have come to expect: signs of retouching.
He said South Korea noticed Kim’s military talk offers, but they were only an expression of DPRK’s perception of the current reality and its position on it.
“Under the authorization of Workers’ Party Chairman Kim Jong Un, the Central Committee sends the warmest greetings to the people and soldiers who concluded the 70-day battle with the greatest of victory and glorified the Congress as an auspicious event,”Kim Yong Nam, the titular head of state, told the rally under overcast skies in the capital’s Kim Il Sung Square”.
Xi had just days earlier repeated his vow to comply with new sanctions against Pyongyang – the latest of the United Nations’ punitive measures were imposed in March following North Korea’s fourth ever nuclear test and subsequent rocket launch.
Images taken last Thursday – on the eve of the start of the first Workers’ Party congress since 1980 – showed four vehicles at the Punggye-ri test site’s command center, raising speculation that a detonation could happen before the historic assembly wrapped up on Monday.
The “chairman” title was used by his grandfather, the country’s revered founding leader Kim Il-Sung, during the 1950s and 60s – a relative golden period of rapid post-Korean War recovery and industrialisation that saw the North’s economy race ahead of the capitalist South’s. However, North Korea has rejected China’s calls for economic reforms and Kim has yet to visit China, despite its status as the North’s key source of financial and diplomatic support.
North Korea’s refusal to denuclearize was equally condemned among members of South Korea’s opposition party.
She has been in charge of propaganda as well as overseeing promotions and appointments.
Their relations have soured in recent months after China signed onto the sanctions against North Korea over its nuclear program.
Politics aside, it was a spectacular display from the country which has become a master of mass set-piece performances such as the Arirang Festival.
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Founded in 1949, the Workers’ Party is the founding and ruling political party of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). North Korea on Monday expelled BBC correspondent Rupert Wingfield-Hayes, who was not among the journalists covering the congress. He had covered an earlier trip of Nobel laureates and had been scheduled to leave Friday.
