Seoul: North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un vowed to further enhance his military ability, maintaining Draconian’s anti-virus steps and pushed hard to improve the economy during a speech at the main political conference this week, the state media reported Saturday.
A state media report about Kim’s speech did not bring comments about dealing with the United States and South Korea.
Some experts say this implies Kim does not have an interest in continuing talks with Washington and Seoul in the near future and prefers to keep the border of his country remain closed while looking for a relatively high economy to overcome the difficulties related to pandemics.
“The increasingly unstable military environment on the Korean Peninsula and international politics has incited calls to encourage vigorously with our national defense buildup plan without delay,” Kim said, according to the official Korean Central News Agency.
Kim ordered the production of a strong modern weapon system to increase his military forces and called for “absolute loyalty and military loyalty” to the powerful party led by him.
KCNA said Kim said “tactical direction” for North Korea’s external relations included with South Korea, but did not describe.
The five-day plenary meeting from the party’s center committee came as Kim marked 10 years in power.
Since inheriting control of the death of the dictator’s father in December 2011, Kim Jong-un has formed absolute power at home and strengthens nuclear and missile arsenal.
But the North Korean economy has experienced a major setback in the past two years due to the border shutdown caused by a pandemic, continuous UN sanctions and falling from natural disasters.
There are no signs of political instability in North Korea, but some experts say the long-term stability of Kim’s leadership can be questioned if the difficulty today continues.
High profile political conferences such as the plenary meeting gave Kim the opportunity to strengthen the unity behind his leadership and showed that he firmly controlled the government.
But it is not clear whether the meeting offers any fundamental solutions for North Korean difficulties, which are mostly associated with manage missteping for decades, insulation forced by themselves and its nuclear impulse, which has made it the most sanctioned country in the world.
During the party’s congress in January last year, Kim acknowledged that the previous economic development plan had failed and said his country faced the “worst” situation.
But during this week’s plenary session, Kim claimed progress in a new development plan, saying that 2021 was a “one year of a big win” which would function as an introduction to a greater change and increase.
Kim cites progress in agriculture, construction, electricity, mining, forestry and many other sectors, which cannot be confirmed independently.
According to South Korea’s estimates, North Korea’s trade with China, the largest trading partner and economic pipeline, shrank by around 80% by 2020 before falling again by two-thirds in the first nine months last year.
In 2020, the North Korean economy was the biggest contraction since 1997 while the production of his grain also fell to the lowest level because Kim took power in 2011.
Seoul officials said the production of northern grains increased slightly.
During the plenary meeting, Kim ordered officials to prioritize an emergency anti-pandemic campaign, said negligence and gap would not be tolerated.
Analysts said Kim was afraid that the fragile public health care infrastructure in his country could not handle the main virus outbreak – even though he maintained a questionable claim that North Korea was free of Koronavirus.
“North Korea is expected to continue to seal the border and resort for independence when carrying out a minimum level of essential trade with China because of the new variant (Omicron) and the continuation of pandemic throughout the world,” said Cheong Seong-Chang analyst at the Personal Sejong Institute.
Cheong said there was a “very low possibility” that North Korea received a US call to restart nuclear diplomacy or South Korean call for a symbolic political declaration to end the 1950-53 Korean War as a way to facilitate tension.
US diplomacy was intended to convince North Korea to leave its nuclear program in return for economic and political benefits that collapsed in 2019 when the President Donald Trump rejected Kim’s demands for extensive assistance in exchange for denuclearization steps.
Kim has threatened to enlarge its nuclear warehouse and introduce high-tech weapons that target the United States and its allies.