North Korea News Podcast by NK News - North Korea’s parade and Party Congress prep, plus personnel purges

Episode Date: January 27, 2026

NK News CEO Chad O’Carroll joins the podcast this week to discuss why the Workers’ Party of Korea still hasn’t held its Ninth Congress, the lack of typical pre-event mobilization campaigns and what satellite imagery of parade preparations suggests about a possible timeline. The episode then turns to leadership dynamics in Pyongyang, including Kim Jong […]

Bestsellers unveiled at NK News Shop. Step out in style with our top-selling apparel from the NK News Shop. Fly high with the Air Cordial T-shirt, celebrating DPRK's golden era of aviation in vintage airline chic. Explore the stars with our NADA, inspired by North Korea's answer to NASA, or toast to tradition with our Tair Dong Gang Beer T-Tier T-Tier, capturing the essence of North Korea's renowned brew.

Each design is a conversation starter. Find yours at shop.nknews.org. Again, that's shop.nknews.org. Hello, listeners, and welcome to the NK News podcast. I'm your host, Jacko Sweetslut. And today it is Tuesday, the 27th of January, 2026. And I'm here in the studio with Chad O'Carroll. Chad, welcome back.

You've been overseas. Yeah. So you've been out of touch with the news? Yeah, we had a staff, essentially. vacation to Thailand last week. We try and do this every couple of years or just to reward our hardworking staff. You were invited but unable to come. Yeah, couldn't get the days off, unfortunately, from a day job. That sucks. But yeah, we went for, I think, four or five nights to Hataya in Thailand, which is an interesting place. Any North Koreans lurking around? Any sign of North

Koreans in Thailand? Do they still have an embassy there? I've forgotten. No, I don't believe officially. Boy. You do choose the interesting locations. Now, it's almost the end of

January and I had expected that we would have had the Korean Workers Party Congress by now, number six and number seven. I forget exactly

what the number was. But yeah, I was going to organize a round table, call it Andre Lunkoff and have a whole lot of fun with that. But we haven't had it yet.

Have they put it off or something? No, it's just not followed the pattern that we saw back in 2021, which was early January, daily news releases about the ongoing Congress. There's been one or two things that we've been looking at as indicators of when this will come.

Firstly, it's been the surprising absence of a working campaign, like a mobilization effort. So you might remember these like 150 day worker battles or 90 day worker battles. Traditionally, we've seen these take place in the lead up. to a Congress. I remember especially a big one back in 2016 before the Congress then. Yeah, and I think I remember one on my first or second trip to North Korea, like 09 or 2010 or 2011. And yeah, the guides back then were complaining about it.

They all had to work much longer hours. And the goal is to deliver economic progress before, you know, wrap up projects as quickly as possible before the Congress. So that's one thing that hasn't taken place officially. But Colin, as we were co-ass satellite imagery analysts, he's been keeping up. close eye on Miriam, the training ground for the parades. Because that's always a good marker, isn't it? Yeah.

And so he's been seeing a lot of indicators in the satellite imagery, thousands of soldiers, 40 block formations. So it looks like around 140, 480 troop transport trucks are there. So they are, the gist of it is that they're getting ready for a big post-congress parade. And it looks like it's going to be bigger than in, well, maybe similar in. size and scale to 2021 we'll have to see. So that's one thing. And then calling you doing a live broadcast for that one. No, those live broadcasts for those of you who are not well. So we try and do like sports stadium style commentary, explain what's going on. The logistics is a pain in the ass doing

those things. It's a lot of moving parts. And because North Korea never publishes the schedules, we're basically on tender hooks for multiple days sometimes. And it's yeah, I don't think we're going to do it for this one because it's not it's not like a huge huge parade it's more like a celebratory one after the congress but colin spotted that also just a quick note to north green officials if you are listening just let us know the schedule and it wouldn't it would help us a lot yeah i mean it would help be kind to end can you help everyone a lot it would help north koreans a lot well yeah but you know the government doesn't necessarily want to make you know about colin yeah so he also spotted that these provincial level conferences are going to be taking place, which is another indicator

that things are going to happen soon. So he said that based on preparations for the previous two party congresses, these provincial level meetings will run for around a week, followed by the Congress starting about a week after that. So when are we talking about here? We are looking at, what, mid-Feb? Mid-Feb, second week of February. Which would be around the birthday of Kim Jong-il, the father of Kim Jong-un, right? That's February 16, 216. Exactly. So it could be, yeah, to coincide with that, let's see. Yeah. And if it's like the 2021 Congress, we're going to be seeing daily sessions culminating with this military parade. Right. And my prediction is having analyzed the goals of the last one and then look to all the state media reporting of what has been delivered, I think broadly speaking it's going to be a much more positive review of the last five years than we had in 2021.

You might remember there was a lot of fury about the fact that a lot of economic goals had gone badly wrong. Yeah. There was the sanctions environment that was partially to blame and COVID. But if you look at what they've been doing, they've been pretty much delivering in most areas. The five-year military plan is like pretty, you know, it's not perfect. The military reconnaissance satellites are not in orbit. The nuclear powered submarine is not sailing anywhere yet. But largely speaking, they've been pretty successful, I think, in delivering what they're

said they were going to do in 2021. Now, speaking of Fury, which you just mentioned there, I'm reminded of a story in the last week or two where Kim Jong-un was visiting a factory up in the north of the country and doing one of his on-the-spot inspections. And he basically fired someone on the spot and said, leave while you still can. Yeah, Kim Tokun, who had been tasked with many of the construction projects, oversight around the country. And a member of the cabinet. I mean, you can't get much higher than that. Yeah, he'd been taught, like, at his peak, he was, you know, appearing everywhere all throughout the country, even down, actually,

at the inter-Korean border, he wants to visit one of those small villages you can see from the South Korean side. Oh, yes. And, yeah, the quote was... This was on during a visit to the Ryeongsong machine complex up in Hungnam, near Hamham on the north-east coast, yeah. Leave on your own feet while you still can before it's too late. Kim had given several chances. So that was, sorry, I was talking about Kim Tokhun there.

This was Yang Song Ho. Ah. Yeah. Kim Tokhun has disappeared. Sorry. That's a... Okay, so it's young that's just been fired and told to get out while you're talking. Yeah, my bad, my bad.

And, you know, Colin and I were talking about this the other day. I mean, the issue that we keep seeing with these stories when Kim Jong-un gets angry, it's fury that projects have been unable to be completed. They've not been delivered on time. There's been corruption, you name it. And the point here was that Kim said he gave Yang several chances to correct these egregious mistakes in the planning, and things still went wrong. Yang tried to make a fool of the party central committee. This is a quote from Kim Jong-un.

Yeah. He's a person who's originally only capable of being the way he is and is unsuitable for entrusting with heavy responsibility. Kim Jong-un called for purging the party of people who are prisoners of immediate difficulties. This was Kim Tokun. And he also called for punishing former cabinet premier Kim Tokhun, who had South Korean median spotted had disappeared. Wow. If you're one of these officials and you're getting a call from Kim Jong-un that says, you know, fix up, this is not going right. We need you to deliver for the party.

The thing that I don't understand is that you would, if you got that call, know the consequences of not delivering. There have been so many examples on front pages of Rodong Shinman. And I think it, I don't think people are willfully not delivering or their own personal greed and corruption is getting in the way because they know the consequences, right? Well, they saw what happened to Zhang Song Tech, of course, memorably. Yeah. And so doesn't this point to a serious structural problem inside North Korea at the working level that while Kim Jong-un can, you know, effectively guide the country like he's playing Sim City and say, I want a hospital here, I want a factory here? if the local regions don't have the resources and don't have the cash, like, what are they meant to do? Are they meant to just, like, coerce their people into donating, like, jewelry or other, like, expensive possessions and then kind of trade them in some kind of pawn shop to get cash to deliver the local project?

Because that's not really realistic at this stage of North Korea's development. So I think the fact that this is a recurring issue points to some kind of serious problem in. the system that Kim Jong-un can get angry about. He can make examples of people, but at the end of the day, if the resources aren't there to deliver, this is going to happen again and again. And I doubt anyone wants to die or be purged. Maybe Zhang Song-Tek was a kind of special case. He had some kind of special motivation to do things rather differently. But I think this is problematic and a sign of risk for Kim Jong-un's leadership in the longer term if this continues. And we know that for a long time, the distribution of those resources has been unequal in North Korea, right?

That it tends to go to certain projects, you know, sort of vanity projects to use the word of Kim Jong-un or Pyongyang especially. And so regions out there in the sticks, they get less and they have to make do with it. Yeah, and this is reflective of another trend we're seeing, we talked about in the predictions event, which was just the growing difference between the haves and have-nots in North Korea. Like Pyongyang is starting to look more and more like a, you know, second, third grade Chinese city and then you go out to the boonies and the level of development is rather little. But yet, if you're living in a boonies and you're watching Korea's central television every day,

you're going to see zooming cameras on these fancy apartments in Pyongyang. They are showing off so much that you can't get away from it and you can't get away from realizing that you're being left behind. And the state propaganda is demonstrating that to you vividly. You know, they always said that what the. reason they wanted to clamp down on information coming from South Korea, Lankov used to say this, that it was that if ordinary North Koreans saw how wealthy South Koreans are, it would create serious question marks about the legitimacy of the government. Well, surely that same dynamic can

play out on a domestic region-to-region front if you're just looking at the huge development in Pyongyang. It does make you wonder, of course, the question that's always at the back of my mind is, how long is this sustainable? How long can this go on for before, you know, there's some sort of a tipping point reach. Now the last story I wanted to talk about today, which caught my eye, was about a story about Roberta Cohen, who was from the former chairperson of the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, which is a U.S.-based organization. And she talked about how spies from both North and South Korea had been targeting her and her organization. Yeah, so she was talking about two periods of time. The first was under the IME-Yung-Bak administration

of South Korea, where her huge... human rights work attracted attention from some of these. They're usually like ministers or counselors from the South Korean embassy. And it led undeclared intelligence agents working at the embassy. Yeah. And it led to meetings and then back in 2009. Yeah. And then, you know, suggestions on what to write opeds and so on.

And, uh, you know, she said she felt a strong opposition having to do with control on her thoughts or controlling me to the point that I'd act on his government's behalf rather than my own as an independent scholar. And then she was offered, you know, fancy French wine worth $100 as a holiday gift. And yeah, the quote diplomat began offering her rides to events. And then her, you know, she started questioning his intentions and who he might be. To be honest, that kind of experience she had, I was aware of others in D.C. That's also bit reminiscent of the Sumi Kim Terry story. Sumi Terry. Yeah. I mean,

the whole thing of gifts and... And influence. Yeah. To exert influence, right? We'd like you to say a bit more of this and less of that. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it sounds like she had a bit of an unpleasant experience.

And then, you know, the North Korea side of it was, of course, hacking attempts and efforts to bug her. And, I mean, her originally, she originally wrote a substack about all of this. I think it was a substack. And she was saying it felt like her. phone was bugged, her landline, strange noise coming out of it, if I recall correctly. And also that when she checked with her network provider, that they had said that there'd been some kind of monitoring going on. So, yeah, it sounds like she had a tough time. I would say what

she's described, though, is not exceptional. I've heard of other people going through this. And yeah, certainly under, I mean, it's a bit of a generalization, but I'd say under conservative leading South Korean presidents, the sort of light hand of the NIS, I think, is stronger towards public intellectuals and advocacy people. And I mean, you could argue also. Actually, under Moon Jae and there was support for some of the pro-engagement people in D.C. It's undisputable. But I'm not sure if Intel services were involved.

Anyway, it's really interesting. And I would recommend reading it. And how, what about North Korean agents? She's also raised the spectre of North Koreans trying to exert control over her. Can you elaborate on that part? Because I'm not familiar with that part of the story. Yeah, so in the story, she writes that she received an invitation to attend a conference at a Washington think tank. And then she got these emails and realized that there was something off about the English.

And it turns out that she'd been corresponding with North Korea and such her been posing as other people. And then she got other bogus invitations from Princeton professors and voice of America journalists. And even the Netherlands embassy in. I've heard about a few of those actually. Yeah. This is basically sort of what, fishing attempts or social engineering? Yeah, impersonation. Those have been going on now for, God, well, over 15 years.

I, yeah, I first experienced those when I was working at the Korea Economic Institute in D.C. We would get these emails from people claiming to be A or B person. And, yeah, English used to be very sloppy, but of course now, now, chat GBT. Yeah, it's a lot better now. Much better. Can we say that if, like Roberta Cohen, you're someone, who was being targeted by agents from both North and South Korea, that you're probably doing something right?

Yeah, I think so. And, yeah, I mean, it's like when we, sorry for those who I've ever pissed off with stories I've written, but when we do stories, we piss off people from the full range of the North Korea and career-watching community, which I think is a good sign because it means that we're not, you know, sticking to any particular line or, yeah. Do you get complaints about the podcast from people?

Rarely. I tell you what, recently I was in a funny situation that I was at a social gathering and somebody told me that they really did not like an interview that I did with a potato agriculture expert. And at the same event, somebody else comes up and said, that was the most interesting one I'd heard in a long time. I love that one. It was on the same evening. Yeah, you can't please everyone. You can't please everyone. No. Hi, Thomas. Thanks, Chad. I'll see you again next time. In the intricate world of Korean affairs, tailored intelligence makes all the difference. Career Risk Group's consulting services offer specialized, actionable intelligence designed to guide your career-related decisions. We provide bespoke consulting services that cater to your unique challenges and goals. From policy analysis to market entry strategies, we bring clarity to complexity. Transform uncertainty into opportunity and visit careerpro.com

solutions 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.