North Korean leader Kim Jong-un could announce a dramatic policy change, comparable to economic reforms that China and Vietnam embraced in the 1980s, when he convenes a rare meeting of the ruling Workers' Party next year, a German expert said Wednesday.
North Korea announced late last month that the seventh Congress of the Workers' Party will be held in early May next year. It would mark the first party congress in 36 years after the last such meeting was held in 1980, when Kim's grandfather and national founder Kim Il-sung was in power.
The announcement spurred speculation as to why Kim decided to convene such a rare meeting.
Ruediger Frank, a North Korea expert at the University of Vienna, said Kim could use the meeting for a "declaration of his victory in the domestic struggle for power" after massive purges in the past years or to announce a major policy change marking the departure down a path of true reform.
Frank also noted that since Kim took power, the formal role of the Workers' Party has been restored, step by step, and such leading party organs as the central committee, the politburo and its presidium have been resuscitated.
"We should also remember that all major reforms of state socialism -- be it in China under Deng Xiaoping, the Soviet Union under Gorbachev or Vietnam under the slogan of doi moi -- have been announced at such regular party congresses or related events," he said in an article contributed to 38 North.
Unlike his father and late leader Kim Jong-il who pursued "songun," or military-first, policy, the current leader pursues the "byeongjin" policy of seeking both economic and nuclear development simultaneously, the expert said.
"Kim Jong-un has from day one of his leadership declared that he wants to improve the material living conditions of his people.
He has tried to do that within the constraints of the existing system," Frank said. "I had estimated that he would need about five years to find out that this does not work, that the system itself is the problem. The time is almost up."
As Kim has consolidated his leadership and the economic situation in the North is relatively stable, the emerging middle class and the growing inflow of information from the outside, in particular via China, have put the regime under high pressure for reform, the expert said.
However, Kim could use next year's meeting only to signal a "return to a new normal," he said.
"Kim Jong-un might ... play it safe and, after having spent the last years cleaning the ranks of the party, military and government, will use the 7th Party Congress for a triumphant declaration of his victory in the domestic struggle for power. The country would return to a new normal and continue to muddle through," Frank said.
In that case, the congress could only issue statements on internal cohesion and monolithic unity, celebrate the status of the country as a nuclear and space power, reshuffle a few posts, glorify the three Kims and emphasize the need for Korean unification, he said. (Yonhap)
