NOKO TOUGH TALK

Kim’s arms boost

North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un vowed to boost his military in the coming year — and made no mention of resuming stalled denuclearization talks with the US and South Korea — in a speech to his nation’s ruling party Saturday.

“The increasingly unstable military environment on the Korean Peninsula and international politics have instigated calls to vigorously push forward with our national defense buildup plans without any delay,” Kim said, according to the state-run Korean Central News Agency.

But the speech, which came at the close of a fiveday plenary meeting of the ruling Workers’ Party, was light on details of the promised military buildup.

Instead, Kim’s address largely looked inward, with a heavy focus on domestic issues like rural development and school uniforms, as the Hermit Kingdom remains tightly locked down amid the global coronavirus pandemic.

“The main task facing our Party and people next year is to … bring about a remarkable change in the state development and the people’s standard of living,” Kim promised.

The regime has refused to accept international offers of COVID-19 vaccines and has sharply limited trade with China in an effort to wall itself off from the virus.

The national isolation program will remain North Korea’s “No. 1 priority,” Kim told party leaders as he referenced the importance of its “emergency epidemic prevention work.” The government has not admitted to a single case of COVID-19 within its borders.

But it has come at a steep cost, international observers say.

The pandemic contributed to a 4.5 percent contraction of North Korea’s economy in 2020, according to an estimate released by the South Korean government last week. Grain production that year dipped 5.2 percent compared to 2019, due in part to severe flooding in its major rice-growing regions.

As a result, the World Food Organization has warned that millions of North Koreans are at risk of malnourishment or even starvation as Kim’s regime grapples with a huge shortfall of the nation’s staple grain.

In his speech, the dictator pledged to “boost agricultural production to completely resolve the country’s food problems” — one of several references he made to “severe hardships” within North Korea’s economy.

The party conference began at the close of an 11-day mourning period marking the anniversary of the 2011 death of Kim’s father, Kim Jong-il, during which laughter was forbidden.