Senior members of North Korea's ruling regime took to the stage today to praise their party and leader Kim Jong Un at their biggest meeting in 36 years, a much-touted and tightly choreographed event intended to demonstrate Kim is firmly in control despite his country's deepening international isolation over its nuclear weapons program.
In something like a formal coronation for Kim, the ruling Workers' Party congress was also expected to officially elect him to its top post.
According to the North's state-run media, the agenda for the congress includes reviewing the work of the party's Central Committee and Central Audit Commission, revising party rules, electing Kim to the top party post and installing a new central party leadership though no major departures from the current lineup were expected.
Video of the proceedings broadcast on state television on the second day of the congress Saturday showed party officials reporting accomplishments in the military, science and economy as part of the first item on the agenda.
The decision to formally install or, perhaps more accurately, reinstall Kim at the top is a step along the lines of his late father and grandfather, who both held the title of general secretary of the Workers' Party, and would demonstrate the young leader is in full control and ready to begin a new era of his own.
Kim is already head of the party, but with the title of first secretary. He could be re-elected to the same post or given an unspecified new one. His father, Kim Jong Il, holds the posthumous title of "eternal general secretary" and his grandfather, national founder Kim Il Sung, is "eternal president."
Kim opened the lavish congress with a brief speech on Friday that singled out North Korea's advances in developing nuclear weapons and rockets capable of putting satellites into orbit, as examples of the country's progress in the face of international criticism and tough sanctions that threaten to further stifle its struggling economy.
Along with being high political theater filled with pomp and ceremony, the congress is being held in a lavishly decorated hall decked out with bright red banners and flags bearing the party's hammer, sickle and pen symbol, the gathering is a major milestone for the young North Korean leader, who was not yet born when the previous congress was held in 1980.
Kim called the congress a "historic" step in a grand struggle pitting the North against "all manner of threats and desperate challenges by the imperialists" meaning mostly the United States. He said it would "put forward the strategic line and tasks to keep ushering in a great golden age of socialist construction and the direction of advance of our revolution.
