Blitz Bureau
NEW DELHI: North Korea’s ruling Workers’ Party has again chosen Kim Jong Un to be its general secretary, state media report. The announcement was made at a rubber-stamp party congress in Pyongyang on February 22. The Kim family has been ruling the country by dictatorship since the late 1940s.
State-run KCNA said that under Kim’s leadership North Korea “radically improved” its “war deterrence”, “with the nuclear forces as its pivot”. Despite long-standing international sanctions, North Korea has continued to build its nuclear capabilities, regularly testing banned intercontinental missiles.
Kim, who took control of the regime after his father’s death in 2011, has invested heavily in the nuclear weapons programme, turning Pyongyang into a far bigger challenge for the West, and especially the US.
He is expected to announce the next phase of the country’s weapons programme during the Ninth Congress of the Workers’ Party of Korea, which began on February 19 and is now in its fourth day. Before it started, North Korea unveiled what it said was a range of nuclear-capable rocket launchers.
While Kim has remained at the top of North Korean leadership, the party congress’ presidium, or executive committee, has been reshuffled since the last meeting in 2021. More than half of its 39 members have been replaced, according to state media. All eyes are on whether Kim’s daughter, Ju Ae, will make an appearance at the congress. Earlier this month, South Korea’s spy agency said that 13-year-old Kim had chosen Ju Ae as his heir.