Politburo Holds Expanded Meeting

Kim Jong Un speaks during a March 9, 2019 expanded plenary session of the WPK Political Bureau (Photo: Rodong Sinmun).

The Workers’ Party of Korea [WPK] Central Committee Political Bureau [Politburo] met on the second floor of the WPK Central Committee office building on the afternoon of 9 April (Tuesday).  Kim Jong Un (Kim Cho’ng-u’n) guided the gathering of Members and Alternate (candidate) Members of the Political Bureau along with provincial party chairs and some of the Central Committee’s department directors, senior deputy directors and deputy directors attended the meeting.

Pak Kwang Ho (annotated) at the Politburo meeting

This was the first observed appearance of WPK Vice Chairman and Propaganda and Agitation [Information and Publicity] Director Pak Kwang Ho (Pak Kwang-ho).  Pak had not been observed in state media in nearly 180 days (around October), except when his was election as a deputy to the 14th Supreme People’s Assembly was announced on state radio on March 13.  Pak was in ill health and took an extended leave of absence.  Standing in his place at some events was PAD’s long time iron hand in the velvet glove Kim Ki Nam and for other events PAD’s Senior Deputy Director, former Rodong editor Ri Yong Sik.

The Politburo meeting’s agenda included proposals for the SPA session on on the DPRK’s national budget for the upcoming year and a report on its implementation during 2018, as well as proposing the convocation and agenda of the fourth plenary meeting (plenum) of the 7th WPK Central Committee on 10 April (Wednesday). There was also a briefing about the work “of leading officials of the Party Central Committee, and the government and provincial party committees.”

Views of the April 9, 2019 expanded Politburo meeting at the WPK Central Committee office building (Photos: KCNA/Rodong Sinmun).

Jong Un analyzed the “work of the departments of the Party Central Committee and the Cabinet” and he “pointed to merits and demerits observed in the work and life members of the Political Bureau and officials of the government and local party committees.” He “made a deep analysis of the matters pending urgent solutions in the party and state.”  Kim Jong Un urged “the need for leading officials to full display a high sense of responsibility and creativity, and the revolutionary spirit of self-reliance and fortitude in an attitude befitting the masters of the revolution and construction under the prevailing tense situation and thus follow through on the new strategic line of the Party.”

Kim Jong Un presides and leads the expanded session of the WPK CC Political Bureau on April 9, 2019 (Photos: Rodong/KCNA).

The Suryo’ng stressed that “main departments of the Party Central Committee should correctly set the key points in the guidance for implementing the Party’s policies, carry out all work in a responsible, active and creative manner and effect a new turn in the party work by increasing their function and role in every way required by the developing revolution.”

Jong Un emphasized that “formalism, expediency, subjectivism, self-protectionism, defeatism, party authority and bureaucratism chronic among leading officials and all sorts of other undesirable practices should be rooted out and they work with dedication to implement the Party’s line and policies and fulfill their revolutionary obligation as true servants of the people.”