According to a report by the KCNA on January 20, the Workers' Party of Korea held the sixth Politburo meeting of the Eighth Central Committee on 19 January, and Kim Jong-un, general secretary of the Workers' Party, attended the meeting on the same day.
The meeting listened to an analysis report on the current situation in the surrounding areas of the peninsula and a series of international issues, and discussed the direction of future response to the United States. Kim Jong-un asked the relevant departments to re-examine the measures taken by the DPRK to build mutual trust with the United States on its own initiative and to discuss in a timely manner whether it is necessary to restart all activities suspended during the period.
The meeting also redeployed the issue of national defense policy in order to facilitate the development of material means to curb the increasingly hostile behavior of the United States against North Korea. North Korea previously announced at the third plenary session of the 7th Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea in April 2018 that it would abolish the northern nuclear test site and completely stop nuclear tests and test-fire of intercontinental ballistic missiles.
Kim Jong-un presided over a meeting Source: KCNA
The report quoted the evaluation of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Workers' Party as saying that after the DPRK-US summit in Singapore, the DPRK made sincere efforts to maintain a de-escalation of the situation on the Korean Peninsula, but the hostile policy and military threat of the United States reached a dangerous point where it could no longer be tolerated. The Politburo of the Central Committee of the Workers' Party unanimously agreed that it is necessary to make more thorough preparations for a protracted confrontation with US imperialism and to take practical actions to further reliably and effectively consolidate material forces.
The Politburo meeting redeployed the task of immediately strengthening and developing more powerful material means to effectively suppress the growing hostility of the United States toward the DPRK, and issued instructions to relevant departments to comprehensively reconsider the measures taken by the DPRK to take the initiative to build trust relations, and to promptly study the issue of restarting all suspended activities.
The meeting also discussed the grand celebration of the 110th anniversary of Kim Il-sung's birth and the 80th anniversary of Kim Jong-il's birth. North Korea has a tradition of military parades on Kim Il Sung's birthday "Sun Festival", and in 2017, North Korea demonstrated a variety of intercontinental ballistic missiles at the 105th anniversary of Kim Il Sung's birth, followed by a test launch of the Hwasong-14 intercontinental ballistic missile in July 2017.
At the 2017 Sun Festival military parade, North Korea displayed an intercontinental ballistic missile Image source: Social media
After entering 2022, the situation on the peninsula has heated up, and North Korea has tested five missiles this month, including two hypersonic missiles. Regarding the progress of North Korea, the United States announced on January 12 that it would impose a new round of sanctions on North Korea. The sanctions include six North Koreans, one Russian and one Russian company.
Regarding the recent situation in North Korea, spokesman Cho Li-kin said in response to a question from a Yonhap reporter on January 19 that the United Nations Security Council had not discussed the arrangements for the so-called draft resolution on sanctions against North Korea. Zhao Lijian stressed that we hope that Security Council members will focus on the long-term and overall situation, take a cautious view of the current situation, focus on promoting the political settlement process of the Korean Peninsula issue, seriously consider the relevant proposals put forward by the Chinese side, and make positive efforts to stabilize the situation, accumulate mutual trust, and restart dialogue.
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