North Korea holds key party meeting to review policy performance in first half

 

 
North Korea has held a key party meeting to review the implementation of state policies in the first half of the year and discuss policy directions for the second half, state media reported Tuesday, without issuing any message toward South Korea or the United States.
 
The North convened the 12th plenary session of the eighth Central Committee of the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK) from Saturday to Monday, according to the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).
 
 
The meeting took place to reaffirm policy directions for the second half and discuss ways to expand and deepen short-, intermediate- and long-term plans for economic construction, the KCNA said.
 
The North’s leader Kim Jong-un, who presided over the latest party meeting, delivered a speech, but state media did not disclose details.
 
The party meeting had garnered attention over whether Kim would issue any message targeting the United States or South Korea as U.S. President Donald Trump and President Lee Jae Myung have shown a conciliatory gesture toward North Korea. But there were no such messages in the North’s media reports.
 
Trump is “receptive” to correspondence with Kim and wants to see the progress that was made during their first summit in 2018, the White House said earlier this month in response to a media report that North Korea refused to accept a letter that Trump attempted to send via North Korean diplomats in New York.
 

 
Lee, who took office in early June, vowed efforts to improve frayed ties with North Korea even as the North’s leader defined inter-Korean relations as those between “two states hostile to each other.”
 
Meanwhile, North Korea said it unanimously approved a plan to convene the ninth party congress at the latest party meeting, calling the event an important “watershed” for the development of the WPK.
 
North Korea’s last party congress took place in January 2021, where the regime unveiled a list of sophisticated weapons Kim had vowed to develop, such as military spy satellites and solid-fuel intercontinental ballistic missiles.
 
The plenary meeting also discussed issues of “radically accelerating the revitalization and modernization of major industrial sectors of the national economy,” the KCNA said.
 
North Korea added that it discussed ways to improve the function of the basic party organizations and the efficiency of the “inner-party structure,” indicating that it may have reorganized the WPK structure.

Yonhap