Idolizing Young Leader

For the first time in these 36 years, the Workers’ Party of Korea held national convention in Pyongyang on Friday. The schedule or agenda has not been released and the meeting is not open to international media. News media reported speech of First Secretary of the party, Kim Jong-un, based on the footage of Korean Central Television. Kim emphasized nuclear power of North Korea to demonstrate his legitimacy as the top leader.

Wrapping his plump body with dark suits, Kim declared the opening of national convention, which would spend three or four days. He praised experiment of hydrogen bomb or launching satellite, being propagated as successful for weeks. The reference of current development in military technology is likely to stress stable power of Kim Jong-un administration.

Some Japanese newspapers focused on why WPK national convention had not held for decades, since national father, Kim Il-sung, grandfather of Jong-un, had the 6^th convention in 1980. Asahi Shimbun commented on the reason to be lack of economic achievement to report to the convention or military-oriented, rather than party-oriented, politics of previous leader, Kim Jong-il, father of Jong-un.

So, the greatest reason of pretty rare national convention is supposedly to idolize Jong-un as the greatest national leader. Kim Jong-il is still popular to the people in the republic as the founding father. Jong-un tried to overlap his figure on his grandfather by wearing similar clothes or respecting party politics. It is the same type of governance his father, Jong-il, took in his regime.

Jong-un looks to be taking “parallel progress” policy of military and economy. But, economy of North Korea is far from its goal. In the last national convention in 1980, the party set a goal of supplying 100 billion hourly kilowatts of electricity. Now, the fact is that only 21 billion is provided to the people. Production of grain is limited to 4.8 million metric tons, far behind of the goal of 15 million. Economy of North Korea does not see an expected great progress so far.

Military-oriented policy torments people’s life. While Kim regime has been pouring resources into development of nuclear weapons or ballistic missiles, sanction by international society harms economic growth of the isolated country. Gross domestic product per capita of North Korea is one-fortieth of that of South Korea, which situation can be paralleled with Afghanistan. There seems to be no great hope among the people for economic improvement.