However, Chinese president Xi Jinping sent a message to North Korean leader Kim Jong-un congratulating him on his new title as chairman of the party.
Advertisement
Old rival South Korea denounced North Korea’s nuclear ambitions, seeing little cause for optimism in a conciliatory gesture Kim made on the weekend when he said military talks were needed with the South to discuss ways to ease tension.
The four-day party congress, which ended on Monday, marked the first such gathering of the party’s top decision-making body in more than 35 years.
Kim has reportedly overseen a series of killings, purges and dismissals since he took power in late 2011, part of what foreign experts call an attempt to tighten his grip on power.
Mr Kim smiled and waved at the crowd and chatted with military and party aides, showed state media footage.
After wrapping up its first Workers’ Party Congress since 1980, North Korea celebrated with a highly choreographed parade in Pyongyang.
The congress did not, for example, formally recognize the growing role of a gray market in one of the world’s most state-controlled economies. He also said he is ready to improve relations with “hostile” nations, and announced a five-year economic plan aimed at boosting the poverty-wracked country’s standard of living.
“There’s going to be a gripe that there’s no policy meat, that he didn’t sit there and give everybody a technocratic speech about policy, but a party congress is not the forum to do that”, he said. Indeed, Kim declared North Korea to be “a permanent nuclear weapon state”, and a phrase to this effect was added to the party’s bylaws. First of all, North Korea must get over its obsession with nuclear weapons.
Hong further stressed the need to continue to impose sanctions and exert pressure on the reclusive regime as there is “danger that North Korea would move to advance its nuclear programs (if given any slack)”. He and other senior party members took their seats, filling several rows on a stage, below portraits of Kim Il-sung and father Kim Jong-il, the walls decked with banners of red with the ruling party’s hammer sickle and pen logo embossed in gold.
“Holding the party congress means we are going back to the original socialist system”.
Hong said Tuesday the congress shows the North has been unable to construct a new guiding ideology, opting instead to strengthen the idolization of past and present leaders.
“I have strong doubt whether the dialogue can lead to peace”, Unification Minister Hong Yong-pyo said during a parliamentary committee meeting at the National Assembly.
Advertisement
“The Kim Jong Un regime is focused on solidifying his power structure and securing its nuclear status”, he told parliament on Tuesday. Mostly, however, the congress put Kim front and center in the eyes of the people and the party as the country’s sole leader. So it’s unusual to receive a pore-level view of the young leader.
