“We are just conducting a military parade in the capital, not military exercises aimed at anyone, or launching anything. Why do they bother to stretch their necks to keep up with what is happening in the north,” Kim said in a statement published by the state North Korea – runs the KCNA news agency.
Kim’s comments were published when a week-long North Korean political event, the Eighth Workers’ Congress, came to an end. The Congress is held for North Korean government officials to meet and reflect on the successes and failures of previous years and set an agenda for the near future. They are usually held every five years or so, but Kim’s father and predecessor – Kim Jong Il – stopped holding them after 1980. Kim Jong Un relived the meetings in 2016.
Experts speculated that North Korea could mark the end of Congress with a military parade, but as of Wednesday afternoon on the Korean Peninsula, North Korean state media had not released any images or videos of such an event.
South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said on Monday, however, that it detected signs of a military parade taking place in North Korea on Sunday night. North Korea often releases well-produced propaganda videos for these events, rather than broadcasting them live.
Kim Yo Jong seemed to confirm that a parade had taken place while mocking the South for wasting his time, although these parades offer valuable clues to the country’s notoriously secret weapon systems. Kim also argued that Seoul’s espionage was indicative of his “hostile approach to fellow northerners”.
“Do they really have nothing else to do but let their military corps do a ‘precision tracking’ of the celebrations in the north?” she said.
Kim was photographed attending Congress meetings, which means it is unlikely that she was purged. North Korean state media showed quirky images of her wearing what appeared to be high heels and a skirt in the cold weather. However, she was seen walking sideways – not in a row alongside other officers and her brother, as she usually does.
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 researcher for the Wilson Center’s Asia Program and a senior researcher at the Sejong Institute, said that while Kim was effectively downgraded, her statement shows that “she is still dealing with issues related to South Korea”.
Thae Yong Ho, a former North Korean diplomat who defected and later became a legislator in the South, said he did not attach much importance to the mystery surrounding Kim Yo Jong’s official role.
“Access to Kim Jong Un is a most important indicator of energy status in North Korea,” said Thae.
North Korea’s economic focus
The main focus of the Party Congress, which started 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 in the next five,” said John Delury, professor at the Graduate School of International Relations at Yonsei University.
However, North Korea has not released any specific plans on how the country will improve its economy in the medium term. Published speeches and statements include typical refrains on socialism and self-reliance, but nothing that could improve the structural issues of the country’s extremely inefficient command economy.
Experts studying North Korea’s economy fear that Kim may have suggested a crackdown on limited commodification within the country, which has been instrumental in growth.
Ramon Pacheco Pardo, holder of the KF-VUB Korea chair at the Institute of European Studies, said it makes sense for North Korea to contain free trade to “allow greater control of the population”, but warned that the regime “cannot really back down. more than 20 years of market economy. “
North Korea’s nuclear plans
Kim Jong Un’s economic agenda may have looked woefully lacking in details, but his plans to update and improve North Korea’s conventional and nuclear weapons were anything but.
The North Korean leader announced in the middle of Congress that Pyongyang was developing several new systems, including a nuclear powered submarine, tactical nuclear weapons and advanced reentry vehicles designed to penetrate or deceive missile defense systems.
Pyongyang would likely need to resume weapon testing to field new low-yield warheads or nuclear weapons, and these tests would immediately attract the ire of the international community.
Advanced reentry vehicles, which drop nuclear bombs at their targets, would degrade the effectiveness of US missile defense systems. Low-yield nuclear bombs are of concern to researchers because they are more palatable to be used as a “first strike” option.
“These are the capabilities that are most likely to be used in a 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 next Biden government in the United States to prevent North Korea from developing and using these weapons, which Pyongyang is prohibited from doing under United Nations Security Council resolutions.
However, the prospects for further negotiations look bleak at the moment.
Despite Kim’s three face-to-face meetings with U.S. President Donald Trump, he said he still sees the U.S. as North Korea’s biggest enemy. North Koreans, said Kim, must “do everything we can to strengthen our nuclear war deterrent and develop the strongest military capability” in order to resist Washington’s so-called “hostile policy”.
Mount and other experts believe that while the United States must maintain its ultimate goal of ridding North Korea of nuclear weapons, Washington needs to focus on more realistic achievements in the short term.
“It is perfectly clear that North Korea will be a nuclear nation, a state with nuclear weapons in the near future,” said Mount. “The biggest problems are these new systems that can pose a great risk of stability.”