North Korea’s Kim Yo Jong calls South Korean government a ‘really strange bunch’ after key political meeting

South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, however, said on Monday that they detected signs of a military parade taking place in North Korea on Sunday evening. North Korea will often post carefully produced propaganda videos of these events rather than broadcast them live.

Kim Yo Jong appeared to confirm that a parade took place mocking the South for wasting its time, even though those parades offer valuable clues to the country’s notoriously secret weapon systems. Kim also argued that spying on Seoul was indicative of its “hostile approach to compatriots in the north.”

“Do they really have nothing more to do than let their military corps do ‘close monitoring’ of the celebrations in the north?” she said.

Kim has been pictured at congressional meetings, which means she is unlikely to have been purged. North Korean state media released bizarre footage with her wearing what appeared to be heels and a skirt in freezing weather. However, she was seen walking to the side – not in a row alongside other officials and her brother, as she has often seen him do.

All of this points to the possibility that Kim’s title change will have little impact on what she does on a daily basis.

Cheong Seong-chang, a member of the Asia Program at the Wilson Center and a senior researcher at the Sejong Institute, said that while Kim has indeed been demoted, her statement shows that she “still manages and controls South Korea’s issues.” .

Thae Yong Ho, a former North Korean diplomat who defected and then became lawmaker in the South, said he did not pay much attention to the mystery surrounding Kim Yo Jong’s official role.

“Access to Kim Jong Un is a more important indicator of the state of food in North Korea,” Thae said.

North Korea’s economic priority

The main goal of the Party Congress, which began last week, was to improve North Korea’s economy.

“This was a congress focused on the failure of the past five years of economic development and how to learn from it and get it right over the next five years,” said John Delury, professor at the Graduate School of International Relations at Yonsei University.

However, North Korea has not released specific plans on how the country will improve its economy in the medium term. The speeches and statements published include typical refrains on socialism and autonomy, but nothing that could improve the structural problems of the country’s extremely inefficient managed economy.

Experts studying North Korea’s economy feared Kim had hinted at a crackdown on limited marketing within the country, which has been key to growth.

Ramon Pacheco Pardo, KF-VUB Korea chair at the Institute for European Studies, said it makes sense for North Korea to curb free trade in order to “allow greater control of the population.” , but warned that the regime “can’t really turn back 20 years of commodification of the economy.”

North Korea’s nuclear plans

Kim Jong Un’s economic program may have seemed terribly short on details, but his plans to upgrade and improve North Korea’s conventional and nuclear weapons were anything but.

The North Korean leader announced midway through Congress that Pyongyang was developing several new systems, including a nuclear-powered submarine, tactical nuclear weapons and advanced re-entry vehicles designed to penetrate or deceive missile defense systems. .

Pyongyang would likely need to resume weapons testing in order to deploy new warheads or low-yield nuclear weapons, and such testing would immediately attract the wrath of the international community.

Advanced re-entry vehicles, which deliver nuclear bombs to their targets, would degrade the effectiveness of US missile defense systems. Low yield nuclear bombs worry researchers because they are more acceptable to use as a “first shot” option.

“These are the abilities that are most likely to be used in limited conflict for coercive purposes, to cover offensive objectives,” said Adam Mount, senior researcher and director of the Defense Posture Project at the Federation of American Scientists.

It is now up to the new Biden administration in the United States to prevent North Korea from developing and commissioning these weapons, which Pyongyang is prohibited from doing by United Nations Security Council resolutions.

However, prospects for resuming negotiations look bleak for the time being.

Despite Kim’s three face-to-face meetings with US President Donald Trump, he said he still sees the United States as North Korea’s greatest enemy. The North Koreans, Kim said, must “do all we can to strengthen our deterrence from nuclear war and develop the strongest military capability,” in order to remain strong in the face of the so-called “hostile policy” of Washington.

Mount and other experts believe that if the United States is to maintain its ultimate goal of ridding North Korea of ​​nuclear weapons, Washington must focus on more realistic short-term achievements.

“It is quite clear that North Korea will be a nuclear nation, a nuclear armed state for the foreseeable future,” Mount said. “The biggest problems are these new systems which could pose a major risk to stability.”