Kim faces crucial congress while mired in crises
Coronavirus restrictions that have significantly limited his public appearances. Warning signals for an economy battered by pandemic-related border closings and natural disasters. The impending departure of a United States president who said he ‘‘fell in love’’ with him.
As North Korean leader Kim Jong-un grapples with the toughest challenges of his nineyear rule, he’s set to open a massive ruling Workers’ Party congress next month to try to muster stronger public loyalty to him and lay out new economic and foreign policies.
While few question Kim’s grip on power, there is still room for things to get worse, especially if the world fails to find a quick way out of the Covid-19 crisis.
That would prolong North Korea’s self-imposed lockdown, and could possibly set conditions for an economic perfect storm that would destabilise food and exchange markets and trigger panic among the public.
The congress, the first in five years, is the ruling party’s top decision-making body. At the 2016 congress, Kim put himself in front, reaffirming his commitment to developing nuclear weapons and announcing an ambitious economic development plan.
Five years later, experts say Kim doesn’t have many options other than to further squeeze the populace for more patience and labour.
‘‘There’s really nothing new the North could present at the congress in terms of developing its economy,’’ said Hong Min, an analyst at Seoul’s Korea Institute for National Unification. ‘‘The country will continue to close its borders as long as the Covid-19 pandemic continues and the international sanctions will persist, so there’s no visible room for a breakthrough.’’
Kim entered this year with a declaration of ‘‘frontal breakthrough’’ against punishing United Nations sanctions, after his high-stakes diplomacy with US President Donald Trump fell apart in 2019 over a US refusal to offer extensive sanctions relief in return for limited denuclearisation measures.
But Kim’s drive faced an immediate setback. In January, North Korea was forced to close its international borders, including the one with China – its biggest trading partner and aid benefactor – after Covid-19 emerged there.
As a result, North Korea’s trade with China in the first 10 months of this year fell by 75 per cent. This led to a shortage of raw materials that plunged the North’s factory operation rate to its lowest level since Kim took power in late 2011, and a four-fold increase in the prices of imported foods like sugar and seasonings, South Korea’s spy agency told lawmakers recently.
For several months, North Korea also restricted the use of US dollars at markets, only to make its local currency, the won, appreciate sharply, triggering mounting public complaints. Authorities executed a highprofile currency trader in Pyongyang in October as a scapegoat, according to one of the lawmakers who was briefed by South Korea’s National Intelligence Service (NIS).
Lim Soo-ho, an analyst at an NIS-run think tank, said that if the Covid-19 pandemic continued for most of 2021, the North’s economy could face a crisis unseen since a devastating famine that killed hundreds of thousands of North Koreans in the 1990s.
During next month’s congress, North Korea is likely to call for another ‘‘frontal breakthrough’’ to bolster its internal strength and build up a more self-reliant economy. But as long as the pandemic continues, the country will have to settle for modest economic goals while focusing on its anti-virus efforts, the Seoul-based Institute for Far Eastern Studies says.
North Korea has steadfastly claimed to be coronavirus-free. Outside experts are highly sceptical of the North’s claim but agree that it hasn’t experienced a widespread outbreak, although its public healthcare infrastructure remains in shambles, with many hospitals still using equipment built in the 1960s and 1970s.
Kim, 36, has been hunkering down. He’s appeared in public just 53 times this year to observe weapons tests, visit areas hit by typhoons, and preside over highlevel meetings, according to Seoul’s Unification Ministry, compared to an average of 103 appearances over the past four years.
North Korea is probably not an overriding priority for US President-elect Joe Biden, who faces several pressing domestic issues. Some experts say the North may opt for its timehonoured strategy of conducting missile tests to gets the US’s attention, like it did during past presidential transition periods in Washington. Others expect it to avoid big provocations that could diminish the prospect for early talks with the Biden administration.
Experts say China will continue to help North Korea, because it won’t let its neighbour suffer a humanitarian disaster that could cause a refugee influx over their border.