13 January 2021 | KOREA CHAIR EXPLAINS
Dr. Ramon Pacheco Pardo
The 8th Congress of the Workers’ Party of Korea was held from 5 to 12 January in Pyongyang. A total of 7,000 delegates participated in the congress, almost five years after the 7th congress of May 2016. Nominally, the congress is the highest body of the Workers’ Party of Korea, tasked with reviewing the party’s work and setting up policy guidelines until the next congress. The centrepiece of the congress that just finished was Kim Jong-un’s nine-hour work report, in which he addressed key domestic and foreign policy issues. For the most part, the report seems to have consolidated messages that the North Korean government and state media have been laying out in recent months. Read more…