International News

PYONGYANG, (APP/AFP) – North Korea raised
the curtain Friday on its biggest political show for a generation, aimed at cementing the absolute rule of leader Kim Jong-Un and shadowed by the possibility of an imminent nuclear test.
The first ruling party congress for nearly 40 years drew thousands of
selected delegates from across the country to Pyongyang for what, in theory at least, was a gathering of North Korea’s top decision-making body.
The 33-year-old Kim, who was not even born when the last Workers’
Party Congress was held in 1980, was expected to deliver a keynote address which will be minutely scrutinised for any policy shift or personnel changes in the governing elite.
The 1980 event was staged to crown Kim’s father Kim Jong-Il as heir
apparent to his own father, 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 confirming Kim Jong-Un’s status as legitimate inheritor of the Kim family’s dynastic rule which spans almost seven decades.
The congress is also expected to confirm as party doctrine Kim’s
“byungjin” policy of pursuing nuclear weapons in tandem with economic development