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| North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and U.S. President-elect Joe Biden / Korea Times file |
By Kang Seung-woo
With North Korea set to hold a rare party congress next month, the Kim Jong-un regime is expected to use the much-heralded event to deliver its message to the incoming Joe Biden administration, according to Pyongyang watchers.
In August, the totalitarian state announced that its ruling Workers' Party will convene its eighth congress in January 2021, the first since May 2016, to lay out a new five-year economic plan. But given the U.S. leadership change in the same month, the North is likely to take advantage of the event to exert influence on the Biden administration's policymaking on North Korea.
"The North has historically mentioned its foreign policy at the congresses, so there will be a message to the United States," said Kim Jung, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies, Wednesday.
"The North's message is expected to be about either maintaining strategic ambiguity or declaring a hardline stance against the U.S."
Hong Min, a senior researcher at the Korea Institute for National Unification, told a forum, Tuesday, "I think the North is trying to express their stance preemptively at the party congress with the possibility of sending a conciliatory message to leave room for negotiations as much as possible rather than taking a tough stance."
However, Kim Jung said a possible message from the congress would be no more than theoretical, adding that South Korea should pay far more attention to its message to the U.S. from a plenary meeting of the party's Central Committee next year. The committee session is an important political occasion for the country to formalize major policy changes or decisions.
"So far, the North's important decisions have been made from the Central Committee's plenary session, as evidenced by its decision to suspend nuclear and missile tests in 2018," the professor said.
"Should the North figure out the Biden administration's North Korea policy and unveil its detailed counter-policy, it would do so at a Central Committee meeting, not the congress."
Along with the forecast about the content of a possible message from the North to the U.S., the timing of the political event is leaving government officials and Pyongyang watchers scrambling to search for any clues and there is a consensus that the party congress is likely to take place before the Biden inauguration on Jan. 20.
The South Korean National Intelligence Service told the National Assembly last month that the North could postpone the congress due to its fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. But it said that if held as arranged, the country also planned to hold another military parade during the congress period to show off its weapons capabilities to the new American president.
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