Mick Hartley

Kim Jong-un’s consolidation of power, from the Daily NK:

North Korea completed preparations for Kim Jong Un’s fourth term as the country’s supreme leader in late February and March 2026, holding three major political events in rapid succession that replaced more than half of the officials in key ruling bodies and hardened the regime’s stance toward South Korea.

The Ninth Congress of the Workers’ Party of Korea (Feb. 19–25), elections for the 15th Supreme People’s Assembly (March 15), and the assembly’s first session (March 22–23) together secured Kim’s reappointment as general secretary of the party and president of the State Affairs Commission. The events also deepened the personality cult around his predecessors while ousting elder statesmen including Choe Ryong Hae from positions of influence.

The reshuffle marks Kim’s 15th year in power and signals a deliberate departure from the model set by Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il. With North Korea’s nuclear arsenal maturing and thousands of troops deployed to support Russia’s war in Ukraine, Kim appears confident enough to chart his own course. That course rests on five pillars: nuclear weapons, self-reliance, ideological reinforcement, hostility toward South Korea, and diplomacy aligned with bloc membership or national interest….

Kim used the address to assert the legitimacy of North Korea’s nuclear program and self-reliance drive, and to declare his intention to keep advancing what he describes as autonomy, independence and self-defense built on nuclear weapons. His remarks also invoked the “three revolutions — ideological, technological and cultural” of the 1970s and called for “strict administrative and legal measures” to prevent what he termed alien and unsound elements from infecting the socialist way of life. He announced plans to introduce a new police system and expand the role of neighborhood watch units and local government offices.

It’s a ratchet. One way only. Always tighter, harder – more crackdowns, more forced conformity, more hatred.

Meanwhile:

A Pyongyang man was sentenced to more than 12 years in prison at a public trial held in mid-March in the city’s Songyo district after investigators found he had spent years watching banned South Korean videos and music in violation of North Korea’s laws against “reactionary ideology and culture.”…

The trial was held in the conference room at the Songyo district courthouse with officials from local government offices in attendance. Speaking in somber tones, the judge itemized each of the man’s crimes, including his rejection of the socialist system and his importation and propagation of “reactionary ideology and culture” from abroad.

The judge sentenced the man to 12 years and four months in prison for “deliberate, repeated and aggravated criminal acts” under the Criminal Procedure Act and the Reactionary Ideology and Culture Exclusion Act. The man’s family members were also forcibly relocated from Pyongyang to Changjin county in South Hamgyong province.

The judge stated that the harsh sentence was intended as a warning to others, a remark that reportedly produced an awkward silence in the courtroom.