North Korea anoints Kim new supreme leader

Party congress pushes nuke expansion

North Korean strongman Kim Jongun cemented control over his ruling Workers’ Party on Monday with a new role seen as a coronation for the young leader.

Thousands of delegates, many in uniform, clapped and cheered enthusiastically as the country’s official head of state, Kim Yong-nam, proclaimed him chairman at the first top-level meeting of the party for 36 years.

The congress, which opened on Friday, has given 33-year-old Mr Kim a podium to secure his status as supreme leader and legitimate inheritor of the one-party state founded by his grandfather.

“Kim’s new position makes it very clear that the whole party meeting is only aimed at solidifying his leg-itimacy as the new leader,” Koh Young-hwan, a former North Korean diplomat who defected to the South in 1991, said in Seoul.

Mr Koh, who is now vice head of the South’s state-run Institute for National Security Strategy, said the rarity of the party congress conferred real authority on the new role. “All past leaders of the party were named at a party congress... so this was a perfect coronation.”

Meanwhile, North Korea’s first ruling party congress for nearly 40 years formally endorsed leader Kim Jong-un’s policy of expanding the countr’'s nuclear arsenal, as South Korea on Monday dismissed his proposals for military talks and improved ties.

The congress confirmed his legacy “byungjin” doctrine of twin economic and nuclear development.

On Sunday, the thousands of delegates to what is technically North Korea’s top decision-making body, adopted a report submitted by Mr Kim the day before to simultaneously push forward economic construction and “boost self-defensive nuclear force both in quality and quantity”.

It also enshrined a policy of not using nuclear weapons unless its sovereignty is threatened by another nuclear power, and of working towards the eventual reunification of the divided Korean peninsula. “But if the south Korean authorities opt for a war... We will turn out in the just war to mercilessly wipe out the anti-reunification forces,” said the document published by North’s official KCNA news agency.