Delegates to North Korea’s biggest political meeting in decades gathered in the country’s capital amid speculation that North Korean leader Kim Jong-il will appoint a son and other family members to key positions as part of a succession plan.
The official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) announced last week that the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK) would hold a conference today to select its “supreme leadership body” after having initially said in June the event would be held early this month. KCNA gave no explanation for the delay.
Party delegates to the conference arrived at Pyongyang’s railway station on Sunday amid sunny, breezy weather, footage shot by video news service APTN in the North Korean capital showed.
PHOTO: AFP/KCNA VIA KNS
The capital city was festooned with flags and placards announcing the meeting.
“Warm congratulations to the representatives meeting of the Workers’ Party of Korea!” read one poster.
North Korea’s state news agency carried a brief dispatch about the arrival of delegates, though provided no details about the meeting itself.
Rodong Sinmun, the North’s leading newspaper, ran an article lauding the party and emphasizing its loyalty to the country’s leader.
“The WPK remains so strong as its ranks are made up of ardent loyalists who unhesitatingly dedicate their lives to devotedly defending the headquarters of the revolution, sharing idea and intention and fate with the leader,” said the article, carried yesterday by KCNA.
The widely anticipated meeting will be the party’s first major gathering since a landmark congress in 1980 where a then-38-year-old Kim made his political debut. That appearance confirmed he was in line to succeed his father, North Korean founder Kim Il-sung.
Kim Jong-il eventually took control when his father died of heart failure in 1994 in what was the communist world’s first hereditary transfer of power.
Now 68 and reportedly in poor health two years after suffering a stroke, Kim Jong-il is believed to be prepping his third and youngest son, Kim Jong-un, for a similar father-to-son power transition.
That has triggered speculation the son could be given a key post at the WPK conference as part of a third-generation power transfer.
Kim Jong-un has been elected to attend the party conference as a delegate of the Korean People’s Army, South Korea’s Chosun Ilbo newspaper reported yesterday, citing a source in North Korea it did not identify.
After Kim Jong-un was elected as a delegate, the party central committee put out internal propaganda proclaiming him to be Kim Jong-il’s sole successor, the report said, citing the unnamed North Korean.
Backing by the military is considered a prerequisite for the succession to be carried out smoothly in a country that operates on a songun (“military first”) policy in which priority is given to the armed forces.
Kim Jong-il was officially chosen as successor in 1972, when he was elected to the party’s central committee, and the same scenario could hold true for Kim Jong-un today, reported the paper, South Korea’s largest.
The question of who will take over from Kim Jong-il, believed to suffer from a host of ailments, is important to regional security because of North Korea’s active nuclear and missile programs and regular threats it makes against rival South Korea.
Some experts fear political instability or even a power struggle if Kim Jong-il were to die or become incapacitated without clearly naming a successor.
Kim Jong-un, believed to be in his 20s, has two elder brothers, who have over the years been mentioned as possible successors.
Analysts have speculated that internal debate among the party elite over whether to publicize Kim Jong-un’s possible political appointment to the outside world, as well as concern about recent devastation from flooding and a deadly typhoon, had likely prompted the delay.
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