After Almost Ten Years, North Korea Has a General Secretary Again: Ruling Party Awards Kim Jong Un Key Title

As the eighth congress of the ruling Korean Workers’ Party nears its end in Pyongyang, North Korea, the country’s leader Chairman Kim Jong Un has been awarded a new title which could see his powers expanded. Although the chairman’s father, the late Kim Jong Il who passed away in December 2011, was general secretary of the Korean Workers’ Party, the new Korean leader was only awarded this title after over nine years in power. The Korean Workers’ Party is the world’s oldest ruling party, which in 2021 will mark 72 years in power, and the most powerful organisation in North Korea. The implications of the party appointing a new general secretary remain to be seen, but demonstrate a new degree of faith the party has in the leadership of Kim Jong Un. Having been selected for leadership at a very young age, and spending his first six years ruling alongside the more experienced Presidium President Kim Yong Nam, who retired in 2018, Kim Jong Un’s new position represents a cementing of his position as his father's full successor. The position of general secretary is notably the same as that held by Joseph Stalin in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and is a position of considerable prestige in a party-state.

The eighth congress has seen the party call for renewed efforts to modernise the country’s strategic nuclear deterrent and to improve the economy. It has seen the party declare the United States to be its “greatest enemy,” and admit to an overall failure of economic modernisation efforts of the past five years - during which economic sanctions from its Western adversaries have been particularly harsh.