The North Korean leader opened the Eighth Labor Party Congress in Pyongyang as the country faces a health, economic and diplomatic crisis.
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It was under the sign of uncertainty that the 8 th Congress of the Labor Party opened in Pyongyang on Tuesday, January 6 . The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) is facing a multifaceted crisis (health, economic, diplomatic) that its continued self-isolation, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, can only accentuate.
A crisis also due to “errors in almost all areas of the country’s development strategy,” Kim Jong-un said in his opening speech to an assembly of 7,000 delegates and participants. A rare admission for a regime like that of North Korea and all the more revealing of the gravity of the situation. “The DPRK is facing a series of unprecedented crises,” he added.
If the 7th th Congress, in 2016, enshrined the coming to power , four years earlier, by Kim Jong-un and was supposed to represent the symbol of a new departure for the country, the one that is opening is a test of the leader’s abilities to cope with an alarming economic situation, not being without recalling the preludes of the stagnation that would lead to the famine of the 1990s.
Personnel changes
The congresses which ratify the decisions taken at the top in military, economic and diplomatic services are also an opportunity to announce personnel changes in governing bodies. The presence, alongside the leader, of his sister Kim Jo-yong, a member of the political bureau, confirms her role in the leadership team.
The founder of the regime, Kim Il-sung , and his successor son, Kim Jong-il, had not convened a congress for thirty-six years. Kim Jong-un, on the other hand, is on his second in five years. Faced with a dark horizon to say the least, he intends to strengthen the “spirit of unity” in the face of adversity, according to party organ Rodong Sinmun.
For fear of the spread of Covid- 19, which would have a dramatic effect given the dilapidated state of its health system, the DPRK was the first country to close itself off from China, in January 2020. A year later, it proclaims that it has no patients, arousing skepticism foreign experts who nevertheless believe that the contamination seems contained. So much so that the delegates present at the congress do not wear a mask. Starting with Kim Jong-un, dressed in a black suit and wearing a badge bearing the effigy of his father and grandfather.
But self-isolation, combined with international sanctions aimed at forcing the DPRK to renounce its nuclear weapons, has stifled the fragile economic recovery of recent years. In one year, trade with China has fallen by 80%, according to the Association for International Trade in Seoul. Many embassies and representations of United Nations bodies and NGOs on site have closed or reduced their staff.
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