North Korea News Podcast by NK News - Kim Jong Un’s reelection, Kim Yo Jong’s promotion and changes at the top

Episode Date: February 25, 2026

NK News Correspondent Joon Ha Park joins the podcast to discuss the ongoing Ninth Party Congress, which kicked off last week in Pyongyang The conversation breaks down key developments from the congress so far, including Kim Jong Un’s reappointment as general secretary of the Workers’ Party, the promotion of younger loyal cadres and the sidelining […]

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That's shop.nknews.org. Hello, listeners, and welcome to the NK News podcast. I'm your host, Jack O'Swet, Wetslute, and today it is Wednesday, the 25th of February, 2026. I'm joined here in the studio by Junha Park. Junha, welcome on the show. Thank you for having me. This week marks the seventh, yeah, seventh anniversary of the failure of the summit at

Hanoi. Indeed, it does. Just thought I'd throw that in there. Last week was my eighth anniversary of having started this podcast series back in February 2018, thank you. And this week, yeah, the failure. The failure of Hannah. Seven years. Wow. Okay. But we're here to talk about the number nine party Congress.

Right. Yeah. Which has been happening the last few days. It's not finished yet, is it? No, no, no. So there's still no timeline of where we can expect it to finish. Of course, we can look back at the Eighth Party Congress, which lasted for eight days. Goodness. So we're still on the sixth or seventh day right now, or six days, sorry.

So we've still got, if they follow the schedule of Eighth Party Congress, then we've got two more days to go. Right. Nothing really substantial as of yet in terms of foreign policy. There's been a lot of focus on domestic issues and economic issues, especially the... Right, because we know what these Congresses, they normally issue the next five-year plan, or at least that's what they've been doing the last couple of iterations. Indeed. So that's what we were sort of expecting on the first couple of days, or at least what I was expecting on the first couple of days, for Kim Jong-un to not so much as replicate what he did, but it's least still mention, you know, foreign relations in his policy. review of how the Workers Party of Korea or the 8th Central Party Committee was going about its sort of five-year relationship with party affairs. And they've got a lot to say on foreign affairs, given their massive approach to Russia in the last couple of years.

Right. So we only saw, well, Real Huan, one of Kim Jong-un's top aides, basically applaud Kim Jong-un for his service to the party during his re-election on the fourth day. Right, he's been re-elected. No surprise is there? No, yeah. It is a rubber stamp parliament. It is North Korea after all.

So Kim Jong-un is the one-only leader of the party that can be sort of put into a general secretary role. And Rio Huan, what he was saying was that he was applauding Kim Jong-un for issuing in the era of Russia-DPR-K relations, sending troops to Ukraine or the Ukraine war. And I think that his continued nuclear weapons development, rejection of economic reform under sanctions that was also applauded by Real Juan, the senior official. He also mocked other countries for failing to secure their own powerful weapons. And going through no specific nations like South Korea or Europe. But of course, some through our analysis in-house, we were looking that

he was probably referring to Washington's relations with the allies. So under President Donald Trump's second term, where he's accusing allies of not spending enough or making allies spend more on their defense issues. So I think it really does put into a chronicle of Kim's career as the North Korean leader. So he became a leader in 2011 December. And then after the death of his father, and then he decided to formally take the title for himself of General Secretary at the Eighth Party Congress in January 2021.

So it is just a continuation of that trajectory. Also on the leadership there, I think that Sister Kim Yo-jong has a new title now. Is that right? So Kim Yo-Jong was appointed a director of an unspecified department. Unspecified. Right. So that was still left out of detail within the Rodong Shimbun on KC&A reporting. Goodness, me.

They are very economical with information, aren't they? Right. Well, but, you know, as we already know, Kim Jong-ho has been the de facto spokesperson of the, you know, Kim Jong-un regime, especially in terms of inter-Korean issues in recent days where she's been commending the South Korean Unification Minister. for expressing regret on the alleged civilian drone incidents that happened both last year and this year January.

She's also been accused, not accused, but she's been saying quite a lot of sassy statements towards the Republic of Korea and also the United States based on what the North Korean interpretation of their own foreign policy is. So she was not specified on which department she's leading. She is now a director of... some department within the Workers Party of Korea.

So indicating that she is one of the most senior among the group that was listed among the 17 department directors in state media. I think it was Monday they published a list of the WPK Central Committee for members. The Workers Party of Korea, isn't it? I understand that some of the old guard have been moved out. I think Cheri Yong He, as he's been around for decades. I mean, he was what he served under Kim in the Song, didn't he? Anyway, certainly very much under Kim Jong-Ru is very prominent.

He was the chairman of the, or he probably still is, the chairman of the Supreme People's Assembly, standing committee. There are also some key figures that were not listed. The senior military officials, Park Chongcheon, leading military and nuclear weapons officials like Rui Pyeongchal and Hong Songmu as well, who are not within that list of appointees.

So what some experts have said or they've told us was that It does suggest that Kim Jong-un is elevating some younger, much more loyal cadres. Putting his own people in, basically. Right. So sidelineing some aging elites, some of them who are in their 70s, I believe. Well, those spring chickens compared to Kim Jong-namu was, what, 90 or not even returning. Yeah, I mean, you know, he's a different story, but what the experts were saying, that they could be in or preparing for retirement.

So several economic and South Korea policy officials were also dropped. indicating some sort of broader accountability for shortcomings in the previous five-year plan from 2021 to 2025 and a continued sort of deprioritization of inter-Korean relations on the forefront. Now, I look through some of the stories there, of course, for our listeners, you'll find all full coverage analysis at NK News and NKPro. In one of the stories there, I saw it mentioned, that Kim Jong-un issued a warning about negligence in terms of workplaces and factories and things. Right, so that happened on the fifth day.

So just yesterday, we got the report that Kim Jong-un, he was vowing to accelerate that level of development that he promised. This is the 20 by 10 project. Yes, so the regional development drive. Basically, you know, building hospitals, you know, different facilities for, you know, civilian use and whatnot. So what he was saying was that he was trying to deliver more substantial benefits to the public. He was also, as you mentioned, criticizing these extreme negligence.

and the management of newly built facilities. So considering, you know, hospitals, factories and whatnot. So he was concluding his review of the party work at the Ninth Party Congress just two days ago, I believe, since the report came out yesterday. So he was trying to reference the problems, as I mentioned, with his 2010 regional development policy. He said that the new five-year plan, which is set to be sort of rubber-stamped within the next few days, and we will hopefully get some more details. Soon would focus on stabilizing and consolidating the economy through a tighter ideological control.

Idealical control, okay. You know, self-reliance, you know, anchored in the three revolutions. And this sort of ties back to, I think it was just last month, that Kim went on an inspection tour of a new factory and basically fired someone on the spot. Right, right, right. Get out while you still can, yeah. So he's not happy with some of the poor performance.

projects and poor performing party functionaries. So he's coming down very hard on negligence. Right. Okay. Now, we've still got a couple of days of the, possibly a couple of days of the Congress look forward to. Has a big vision, you know, been laid out for the people? Not really.

It's been quite a lot of optimism except for, you know, the negligence comment that was made and a couple of other fleeting comments by Kim Jong-un. regarding what the party was like in the past five years, regarding sort of economic policies and whatnot. I think that what we can expect for the next few days is, or at least what the team is expecting, is a forthcoming roadmap of the next five years. So political, economic, and military strategy,

we are seeing that, you know, three main agenda items were, are still ongoing. So I think the review of the, Workers' Party of Korea Central Committee work. That's still in the process of review, as I believe. I think it was still in review this morning when the report came out without Kim Jong-un mentioned. I think it was just party delegates who were reviewing. We've got a completion of revision of party rules and the election of central leadership bodies that were completed both on Sunday or reported to have completed both on Sunday. So those three main agenda items, or one of them,

is still ongoing. So we'll see perhaps a roadmap or a full report of what the party decides to do for fiscal year, 26th to for the next five years. So yeah, that's literally what we're expecting. Or I'm certainly wondering whether some sort of a big picture plan is going to be laid down for how North Korea is relating to South Korea, you know, whether there's a... Nothing really that's been mentioned in terms of South Korea. It's probably just to continue of what we've seen, you know, sidelineing South Korea from the foreign relations talk. There are some predictions and some expectations of how South Korea would be seen

or designated by North Korea during this iteration of the Workers Party Congress. You know, the sort of redrawing of the inter-Korean maritime border. Sort of designation of South Korea as the hostile state, you know, repeating that statement or, you know, even, moving forward going for a constitutional review of, you know, amendment of how South Korea should be seen or whether they implemented and mandated within their constitution, which they still haven't done yet from... Or at least it hasn't been publicized it to have, right?

So there have been, you know, some speculation of how South Korea will be viewed by the North Korean Party elite and also Kim Jong-un in this party Congress, but as I mentioned, nothing much. Interesting. And we're possibly expecting a parade to sort of wrap things up at the end, right? Right. So satellite imagery that was analyzed by our senior analytic correspondent, Collins Verko. He did analyze that we were expecting a military parade to happen at the end of the party congress. When that will happen, we don't know. But if it does follow the schedule of the 8th Party Congress, which finished on day 8 with a military parade,

then we could, you know, see a military parade within the coming days. When would day eight be in this case? Day eight would be, I think, Sunday or Saturday, I believe. So end of this week or the start of next week. Right, right, right. There could be a parade on Monday. Yeah. Who knows.

Yeah. And we will probably reconvene a roundtable of a number of our colleagues here at NK News and NKPro next week to go through all the finer details of the Congress and the parade, if indeed there is one. Because as I mentioned before, North Korea is very economical. It doesn't release schedules ahead of time. It doesn't say ahead of time whether they will be appraided. Even afterwards, sometimes like, for example,

I imagine Kim Jong-nose-nows what department she's now the director of. And maybe it was even announced at the meeting. I certainly hope so. Yeah, you hope so, right. But in North Korea's reporting of these things, in the Rodong-Shin-win, it can sometimes be retrospectively economical with information. Why all this thriftiness with facts? That's the enduring mystery of North Korea, isn't it?

There's so much that goes on that they want the world to know certain things. Take, for example, the daughter, Kim Jueh. We've seen a lot of stories in the mainstream media in the last couple of weeks. Kim Jong-un has appointed her or rather chosen her as designated successor. But none of this has been reported in North Korean media, right? No. They've referred to her as the sort of darling daughter. or whatever.

Respected child or something. Yeah. A respected child, whatever. But there's not really been much concerning her title or her actual name. And she's not been, she's not appeared at the Congress. No. No. Interesting.

So again, it's, North Korea wants us to know certain things and wants us to think certain things. So it's been clear, as we've been saying over the last few months. That's the objective of state media, wherever you go. You know, Chinese state media does the same. Right. So North Korean state media is no different in terms of what it wants the public to know. or what it wants the public to think. It's, I think, up to us to analyze what their main objective is.

Of course. But there is a certain playfulness to it. It feels like, doesn't it? It does feel at times that North Korea is sort of playing games with the outside world saying, well, let you know this much, but we won't let you know that. I mean, you see from the statements that Kimmer Zhang makes to South Korea that she is quite vocal in terms of what she wants to say to South Korea and what she wants to leave that. You know, South Korea and the Ministry of Unification officials will interpret that the way that they want to.

to Blue House officials will interpret that the way that they want to. But I think it's quite certain that the Unification Minister is still trying to, you know, allay the concern that South Korea is going the same route as the UN administration. But, you know, I don't think that's really working with Kimmer Zhang. And she's taking this sort of dual-track approach of, look, we commend you for what you're doing. But at the same time, we don't really want anything to do with you. Minister Jong, if you're out there, if you're listening, we welcome you here on the NK News podcast. Anytime you're ready.

We've got a seat to you. Please do. Yeah, please do. Well, thank you very much, June half, for walking us through the latest news from the Congress, and we'll talk to you again soon. Thank you. Looking to stay informed about South Korea's fast-evolving political business and cultural landscape, join us on Korea Pro, the go-to resource for in-depth analysis expertly curated by top-tier professionals. And now you can pick the membership level that best suits your needs, thanks to our new subscription packages. Starting at just $199 annually, you can access daily analysis and our weekly podcast.

Or try our premium membership package, which offers additional perks such as executive briefings, monthly reports and forecasts, networking receptions and event opportunities, as well as much, much more. To find the best fit for you, just head to signup.org and become a member today. Ladies and gentlemen, that brings us to the end of our podcast episode for today. Our thanks go to Brian Betts and David Choi for facilitating this episode and to our post-recording producer Alana Hill, who cuts out all the extraneous noises, awkward silences, bodily functions, and fixes the audio levels.

Thank you for listening and listen again next time.