Kim admits failure at party meet
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un issued a dire warning at North Korea’s first ruling party congress in five years, saying development plans fell far short of their goals and the party would explore a “new path” for making a “big leap forward”.
The days-long Workers’ Party Congress — convened to draft a new economic plan — began shortly after Mr Kim skipped his usual New Year’s Day address. In opening remarks on Tuesday, Mr Kim said the party’s previous five-year development plan, which ended last year, missed its targets due to both “internal and external challenges”, according to the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).
“The goals we set were immensely underachieved in almost all sectors,” Mr Kim said, according to the KCNA, making a rare admission of fault by planners.
Remarks reported by state media didn’t mention any plans by Mr Kim to revive stalled negotiations with the US to curtail his nuclear arms programme in exchange for easing sanctions choking the state’s paltry economy. The gathering of 5,000 delegates and party officials is being closely watched for clues as to how Mr Kim will approach the incoming administration of US President-elect Joe Biden.
Koh Yu-hwan, president of a government-funded Korea Institute for National Unification think tank in Seoul, said North Korea would probably hint at its US and South Korea strategy in later congress meetings.
“North Korea may have calculated that the sanctions regime will last for a while,” Mr Koh said. “It is finding problems internally to speed up the economic recovery, things North Korea can do during the sanctions regime.”
Mr Kim is one of the few world leaders yet to congratulate — or even acknowledge — Mr Biden’s defeat of President Donald Trump, who dispensed with decades of US foreign policy to hold three meetings with the North Korean leader. There was no mention of the president-elect in the initial accounts of the event.
Mr Biden’s camp has signalled more room for negotiations, and the
president-elect’s choice for secretary of state, Antony Blinken, has backed a negotiated settlement with North Korea that first freezes and then rolls back its nuclear programme in return for rewards.
State media didn’t explain what Mr Kim’s “big leap forward” would entail, other than groundwork would be laid for improving living standards. The term evoked Mao Zedong’s “Great Leap Forward” in China, a disastrous attempt to catch up with the industrial powerhouses of the West that contributed to mass famines.