North Korean officials are studying a compilation of leader Kim Jong Un’s remarks to senior party figures before his recent visit to China, with the materials positioning North Korea as a emerging global power.
“Officials’ study groups received a compilation of the Supreme Leader’s talks on the recent international situation, his visit to the People’s Republic of China and relevant foreign and diplomatic policies as an immortal, classic revolutionary work, with officials studying it from Sept. 4,” a Daily NK source in Pyongyang said recently.
According to the source, the study sessions begin by praising Kim as an “outstanding and sophisticated politician who is leading the world based on independent state power and an invincible status amid the suddenly transforming international situation” and as “humanity’s great figure who is relentlessly ensuring the dignity of independent Korea, the people’s peace and our national strength.”
The sessions provide an in-depth examination of Kim’s statements made during talks with leading Central Committee officials before he visited China.
According to the study materials, Kim told Central Committee officials he was “sure that his visit to China would become a historical and deeply significant step showing the world once again that the path we chose, the path our party and people chose, was the perfectly right one.”
He said the visit would “symbolically demonstrate the historic opportunity of the DPRK’s extraordinarily elevated status, while serving as a new, global revolution and heroic effort, with the world returning to a two or three-nation axis of North Korea and China or North Korea, China and Russia.” He characterized the visit as a “historic event that opened a new situation, with North Korea serving as a bold leading nation in the reorganization of the global order.”
Strategic foreign policy framework
The study sessions also assess the international situation and focus on Kim’s foreign policy strategy statements during his Central Committee talks.
Kim said recent pressure through intensified military cooperation among South Korea, the United States, and Japan has heightened the need for tripartite collaboration among North Korea, China and Russia in politics, economics, and military matters.
Kim noted that China “is broadening its base and background for its own strategic support diplomacy despite U.S. containment and pressure, and we must connect this to our national strength and stability.” He said North Korea and China “must strengthen cooperation in each field as our interests coincide under the shared goal of checking U.S. hegemony and easing tensions on the Korean Peninsula and, beyond that, the Asia-Pacific region.”
Kim outlined his strategy to pioneer the international stage by bolstering deep, mutual recognition and respect between North Korea and China based on historic bonds and trust, creating a political foundation for China to adopt a neutral or tacitly approving stance during North Korea’s negotiations with the United States over recognition of Pyongyang’s nuclear status.
Kim also discussed economic cooperation with China, saying North Korea must secure food, energy and raw material aid from China and use the assistance to ease economic hardships and stabilize people’s livelihoods.
“The study sessions end with calls to expand political education across the entire society to teach people that our Supreme Leader isn’t an isolated leader but a politician leading the world,” the source said.