PYONGYANG, (APP/AFP) – North Korea readied Thursday
to kick off its most important ruling party gathering for nearly
40 years, amid persistent concerns of a nuclear test, despite no
clear signs of an imminent detonation.
Leader Kim Jong-Un is expected to deliver a keynote address
at the opening of Friday’s party congress, which will be minutely scrutinised for suggestions of a significant policy shift or
personnel changes in the nuclear-armed nation’s governing elite.
The 33-year-old Kim was not even born when the last congress
was held in 1980 to crown his father, Kim Jong-Il, as the
heir apparent to his grandfather and the North’s founding leader
Kim Il-Sung.
While the agenda — and even the duration — of the event
is still unknown, its main objective is widely seen as cementing
Kim Jong-Un’s status as supreme leader and legitimate inheritor of
the Kim family’s dynastic rule.
International News
N. Korea readies for party congress, nuclear test fears persist
