Kim Jong-un defends external ties in important N Korean congress

Seoul, Jan 8 (efe-epa).- North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, defended on the third day of the congress of the country’s single party, the review of ties with South Korea and the need to “expand and develop fund external relations,” state media reported Friday.

However, as has happened since the beginning of this congress, the state media offered little more context about what the leader said in Pyongyang before the delegates and the leadership of the Workers’ Party.

The Rodong newspaper and the KCNA news agency only mentioned that the analysis carried out by Kim “studied the issue of relations with the South, as required by the current situation and changing times,” and stressed the need to “thoroughly expand and develop external relations.”

Despite Kim’s hand reaching out to Seoul in a speech in October, inter-Korean ties have been progressively frozen since the failure of the denuclearization summit between Kim himself and outgoing United States President Donald Trump in 2019.

Pyongyang last year went so far as to destroy the inter-Korean liaison office built on its territory, in apparent protest at the sending of anti-regime propaganda by activists from the south.

Similarly, Kim still does not directly mention the US in the speeches he has given since the eighth congress of the Workers’ Party began on Jan. 5.

Many experts hope this important political appointment will serve to shed some clues about the regime’s stance on its nuclear program and the planned change of government in Washington.

However, the regime has so far chosen to remain silent about Joe Biden’s victory in the US presidential elections and has also managed information about this council in a trickle.

The country has yet to clarify when the congress will conclude.

Many take it for granted that Friday – Kim’s birthday – will be the fourth and last day of the event, as happened in the 2016 congress, and that it will close with a military parade whose preparations were captured by satellite images. EFE-EPA

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