North Korea goes potty for party congress
NORTH Korea’s rain-soaked capital was festooned yesterday with banners celebrating leader Kim Jong-un ahead of a ruling party congress, as rival South Korea expressed concern that Pyongyang could conduct a nuclear test before or during the rare event.
Flower pots lined balconies along streets that have been tidied as part of a 70-day campaign for the first Workers’ Party congress in 36 years, which starts on Friday.
At the congress, Mr Kim is expected to declare isolated North Korea a nuclear weapons state and formally adopt his “Byongjin” policy to push simultaneously for economic development and nuclear capability.
It follows Mr Kim’s father’s Songun, or “military first”, policy; and his grandfather’s Juche, the North’s homegrown founding ideology that combines Marxism and extreme nationalism.
“Let’s uphold Great Comrade Kim Jong-un’s Songun revolutionary leadership with patriotism!” one banner read.
Isolated North Korea has conducted a series of weapons tests including three failed launches of an intermediate-range missile, in the run-up to the Workers’ Party congress.
One banner in Pyongyang extolled a February rocket launch that put a satellite in space.
Overseas, however, the launch drew condemnation as a ballistic missile test in disguise.
Mr Kim has pursued nuclear weapons aggressively and could be looking to a successful fifth test this week as a crowning achievement, foreign analysts have said.
South Korean Defence Minister Han Min-koo said Pyongyang’s nuclear test might come before or around the time of the opening of the congress.
“North Korea’s goal is to be internationally recognised as a nuclear weapons state,” Mr Han told a parliamentary hearing yesterday.
“We believe its nuclear capability is advancing.”
North Korea has invited foreign media to cover the congress, although journalists’ movements are closely managed, and much of the country and its people remain off-limits to outsiders.
Pyongyang citizens “fervently welcomed participants of the congress, who have given all their patriotic passion ... as a new generation of true warriors of Juche revolution under the leadership of dear comrade Kim Jong-un,” North Korea’s official Rodong Sinmun newspaper said yesterday.
Security has been stepped up ahead of the congress. The Daily NK, a website run by defectors with sources in North Korea, said that since the middle of last month, free movement in and out of the capital had been stopped, and security personnel summoned from the provinces to step up domestic surveillance.
The party congress is the first since 1980, before Mr Kim was born. His father and predecessor, Kim Jong-il, who died in December 2011, never held one.
While some past party congresses featured representatives from countries the North has ties with, South Korean officials have said they were not aware of invitations sent to official foreign guests for the coming event.
North Korea has become increasingly isolated over its pursuit of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, and was hit with tightened United Nations Security Council sanctions in March that were backed by its chief ally, China, in response to a January nuclear test.