North Korea called for a nuclear-free world

[Anthea]

North Korea used its last party congress to call for a nuclear-free world

North Korea has been anticipating the Seventh Workers Party of Korea Congress for months now. Following the announcement of the Congress the energy of North Korea’s media organisations was unleashed rhetorically.

All manner of bureaucracies have been harnessed to underpin the congress’s importance. There was even a "70 Day Campaign of Loyalty,“ a campaign similar to past Chinese efforts such as Dazhai Speed under Mao or Soviet Stakhanovism.

Finally the date of the congress has been unveiled as May 6. So what can we expect from it? While we cannot know for sure, North Korea’s capacity to surprise should never be underestimated.

In recent months, Pyongyang has constantly reminded the rest of the world of its nuclear and ballistic ambitions and capabilities, and has reacted with its trademark fury to the world’s denunciations and sanctions. But none of these things help us get a handle on what the latest congress is meant to achieve, or what surprises it might have in store.

As is often the case when it comes to understanding North Korea, perhaps a look backwards might help.

The last party congress was held in October 1980, and the best document of what it meant is then-Supreme Leader Kim Il-Sung’s report to the Sixth Congress of the Workers Party of Korea on the Work of the Central Committee.

This report revolves around the themes of aspiration and development, cast in familiar North Korean language: “scientificisation”, “three revolutions”, “signal progress”. And the projects it proposed some 36 years ago, among them the development of hydroelectric power, are still still being pursued three and a half decades later

Likewise, the report asserts that “Developing the fisheries and increasing the output of sea foods is an important way of improving the life of the people” – yet another economic plank that Pyongyang is still trying to nail down. The Sixth Congress also made a great show of the imagery of natural abundance, one of the most ancient North Korean preoccupations: “Our country is mountainous and our forests have plenty of vegetation of economic value.”

So in some ways, Kim Il-Sung’s 1980 report suggests a stagnancy in North Korean policy. Pyongyang’s developmental policy remains an echo chamber, an endless cycle of disappointment and dead ends.

But on other matters, the report reads like something from a parallel universe.

Kim Il-Sung, it seems, had a very different vision for North Korea’s future than his grandson does today. In the report, he lays out the now semi-forgotten dream of creating a Democratic Confederal Republic of Koryo (DCRK), a one state two systems model in which the Korean Peninsula would be unified, but its differing political and economic systems preserved through a radicalfederalism. He calls it a reflection of “the common political aspirations of north and south for democracy” and that it should “pursue a policy which agrees with the fundamental interests and demands of the entire Korean people”.
Never forgotten: Kim Il-Sung. Gilad Rom via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY

These aspirations seem remarkably tame, even open-minded, compared to the North’s extravagant belligerence since the start of the 21st century. Kim Jong-Un’s attitude to the government in Seoul makes unification unlikely in the extreme, even as he still makes a big rhetorical point of backing it.

Even more bizarre by contrast is Kim Il-Sung’s commitment to the Non-Aligned Movement, a movement led by India, Indonesia, Egypt, Yugoslavia and Ghana) which sought to plot a middle way for nations not affiliated to either side in the Cold War. The North has long expressed its desire for a multi-polar world of independent nations. In 1980, that explicitly meant breaking up the Cold War’s geopolitical blocs: “Our Party holds that the aggressive imperialist military blocs and all others must be dissolved”.

And most surprising of all, that came with an unambiguous commitment to the Non-Aligned Movement’s principle of “nuclear-free zones”: “We maintain that the testing, manufacture, stockpiles and use of nuclear weapons must be prohibited throughout the world, all of them destroyed completely.”

Today, North Korea seems willing to squander geopolitical capital and forgo economic security to fulfil its nuclear ambitions. It’s a long journey from October 1980 to January 2016, when Pyongyang announced its first H-Bomb test. To some extent, this transformation has simply followed the arc of history: the world order has fundamentally shifted in the intervening 36 years, and much of the geopolitical framework which supported Pyongyang at the time of the Sixth Party Congress has disappeared.

Still the fact that North Korea ever joined in the call to eradicate nuclear weapons is still extraordinary, and it must not be forgotten. As the world prepares for a rare public exposition of North Korea’s agenda, everyone watching should remember that confusing though it is, the North is not a true “hermit kingdom”, hatching its plans for the future outside of political reality.

Just what’s in store this year remains to be seen, but we should prepare to be surprised.

https://theconversation.com/north-korea ... orld-57858

[Anthea]

North Korea leader Kim sets five-year economic plan, vows nuclear restraint

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said his country will not use nuclear weapons unless its sovereignty is infringed by others with nuclear arms, state media said on Sunday, and set a five-year plan to boost the secretive state's moribund economy.

North Korea is not the enemy - propaganda is

The North "will faithfully fulfill its obligation for non-proliferation and strive for the global denuclearization," Kim said in a report to a rare congress of the ruling Workers' Party (WPK) that opened on Friday, the KCNA news agency reported.

Pyongyang was also willing to normalize ties with states that had been hostile toward it, Kim said.

Isolated North Korea has made similar statements in the past, although it has also frequently threatened to attack the United States and South Korea, and has defied United Nations resolutions in its pursuit of nuclear weapons.

The first party congress in 36 years began amid anticipation by the South Korean government and experts that the young third-generation leader would use it to further consolidate power. Kim became leader in 2011 after his father's sudden death.

North Korea's economy is squeezed by U.N. sanctions that were tightened in March following its latest nuclear test, and Kim's five-year plan to boost economic growth emphasized the need to improve North Korea's electricity supply and develop domestic sources of energy, including nuclear power.

He laid out the blueprint in an address highlighting his "Byongjin" policy of jointly pushing forward economic development and nuclear armament.

On Sunday morning, foreign journalists were told to dress presentably and were brought to the People's Palace of Culture, where dozens of black Mercedes-Benz sedans, with the 727 number plates reserved for top government officials, were parked.

However, after a one-hour wait in a lobby outside large wooden doors with frosted glass, the journalists were taken back to their hotel without having met any officials.

While the North Korean capital has been tidied-up as part of a 70-day campaign of intensified labor ahead of the congress, the 128 members of the foreign media invited to Pyongyang to cover the event had yet to be granted access to the proceedings.

State television broadcast Kim's Saturday speech only on Sunday afternoon.

ENERGY FOCUS

Secretive North Korea does not publish economic data, although South Korea's central bank said last year the North's economy grew by 1 percent in 2014. The estimate did not include gray market economic activity that has grown steadily in recent years and created an expanding consumer class.

Kim's economic plan spelled out areas of focus, including more mechanization of agriculture and automation of factories, and higher coal output, but gave few specific targets.

"(We must) solve the energy problem and place the basic industry section on the right track, and increase agricultural and light industry production to definitely improve lives of the people," state media quoted Kim as saying.

While the plan was short on detail, Michael Madden, an expert on the North Korean leadership, said it was significant that Kim had set out an economic plan at all.

"In stark contrast to his father, he is publicly taking responsibility for the economy and development as the originator of the policy. His father never undertook that responsibility," Madden said.

North Korea came under toughened new U.N. sanctions in March after its most recent nuclear test and the launch of a long-range rocket, which put an object into space orbit, in defiance of past Security Council resolutions.

Since then, it has continued to engage in nuclear and missile development, and claimed that it had succeeded in miniaturizing a nuclear warhead and launching a submarine-based ballistic missile.

"As a responsible nuclear weapons state, our Republic will not use a nuclear weapon unless its sovereignty is encroached upon by any aggressive hostile forces with nukes," KCNA quoted Kim as saying on the second day of the meeting on Saturday.

Kim, 33, also called for improved ties with the rival South by erasing misunderstanding and mistrust, although he has made similar proposals in the past that led to talks by government officials that made little progress.

The two Koreas remain in a technical state of war since their 1950-53 conflict ended in a truce, not a peace treaty, and relations have been at a low since the North's January nuclear test, its fourth.

In March, Kim said the North would soon test a nuclear warhead, and South Korea has said Pyongyang may conduct its fifth nuclear test in conjunction with the party congress.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-north ... SKCN0XY0QB