North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has ordered tougher legal supervision to support his development plans and eradicate various economy-related unlawful acts, state media said yesterday, as he works to salvage an economy battered by the COVID-19 pandemic and other challenges.
Kim spoke on Wednesday during a Workers’ Party meeting convened to follow up on decisions made at the party congress last month, where he admitted previous economic plans had failed and announced a new five-year development plan.
He “stressed the importance to strengthen legal supervision and control over the establishment and executive process of the national economic plan,” the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said.
Photo: Reuters
He said prosecutors and other law enforcement organizations must do more to ensure the economic plan is correctly executed and “stage a strong legal struggle for checking all kinds of illegal practices revealed in economic activities.”
Kim added that “all sectors and units should obey them unconditionally,” KCNA said.
North Korea’s top prosecutor, U Sang-chol, told the party meeting that he would firmly implement Kim’s order.
He said he would “offensively” keep legal watch over agencies violating the socialist economic management order and take “powerful measures” against any acts hampering efforts to strengthen industries, according to KCNA.
Kim faces what appears to be the toughest crisis of his nine-year rule as the already-troubled economy is hit by pandemic-related border closings that have sharply reduced the North’s external trade, a spate of natural disasters last summer and persistent US-led sanctions.
During the party congress, Kim described the difficulties as the “worst-ever.”
The new five-year plan centers on building a stronger self-supporting economy, reducing reliance on imports, making more investments in the metal and chemical industries, and increasing production of consumer goods.
However, several analysts said the new plan still lacks substance, and that North Korea’s difficulties result from decades of mismanagement, self-imposed isolation and the sanctions imposed because of its nuclear program.
North Korea’s push to boost legal control over the economic plan shows Kim is “desperate to report progress over the new five-year plan to secure a stability of the Kim Jong-un government,” said Kim Dong-yub, an analyst from Seoul’s Institute for Far Eastern Studies.
He said punishment for those embroiled in alleged corruption, negligence and incompetence would likely be harsh.
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