North Korea News Podcast by NK News - North Korea’s youth outreach, Party Congress signals and prison demolition

Episode Date: January 20, 2026

This week, NK News Senior Analytic Correspondent Colin Zwirko delves into the large-scale conference marking the 80th anniversary of the Socialist Patriotic Youth League, attended by Kim Jong Un.  He then turns to signals surrounding the timing of the upcoming Ninth Party Congress, as well as expectations for announcements on long-term economic planning, weapons development […]

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I'm your host, Jacko's Wedsoot, and today we are recording this on Monday, the 19th of January, 2026, and I'm joined via Streamyard by my colleague Collins Worker. Colin, Colin, welcome on the show. Good morning, Jackal. So we've got a couple of stories to talk about. Let's talk about the Youth League, or what's the full title again? It's the Socialist Patriotic Youth League. used to be called the Sarol Chong, the Social Democratic Youth League, but they changed the name a couple of times, most recently back in 2021 to whatever it is now.

And they had a meeting, and Kim Jong-un was there. What did you have to say? Yes, there was a large-scale conference attended by maybe a few tens of thousands of people, youth. The North Korean Youth League is age 14 to 30. It looked like most of the attendance were a big bracket of age group there, isn't it? Yeah, you've got, they've got them covered ideologically from, you know, soon after birth until later in life. You're in the children's union starting from, I don't know, some, I forget the exact age, until 14 and then you graduate to the youth league. And it looked like the crowd was in college and 20s age group. And my understanding about the socialist Patriotic Youth League, Colin, is that basically when you join the party, you age.

out. So you can't, the Social and Patriotic Youth League is for people who are not yet party members. So once you become member of the Korean Worker's Party, then that's your organization. You don't become, you don't stay a member of the Youth League anymore. Right. And so the whole point of this event is the, well, it's the, they're celebrating the 80th anniversary, you know, despite the name changes and whatnot and organizational changes throughout the year. But it's just basically, you know, Kim Jong-in saying, hey, this is a key group of people in our country that I rely on to keep our ideological goals going, to keep our system going. It is quite upfront about that.

Like, I have this system, my totalitarian system, and you are the ones that I rely on to keep it going. Well, and it's certainly, you know, to continue it going into the next generation, you've got to get the youth involved. We've seen that happen in lots of countries where if they let the youth go, then people become disconnected from the system a little bit. So he doesn't want to see if that happened. And the last few years with various laws, there have been a focus on youth and youth behavior

and the possibilities of youth being corrupted by outside culture. Yeah, and you can kind of read between the lines here. He said, our youth, though he was very, he didn't really talk about anything negative in his speech. He said, our young people have never been a burden on our country, which is sort of a reference to maybe youth problems in other countries. But we know as a fact that North Korea has been dealing with, trying to get its youth ideologically in line and to pull them away from foreign cultural

influences. So that is a burden that Kim Jong-un has been dealing with. And then basically two other main points from his long speech that he gave were complementing the youth that provides their lives to fight in the war against Ukraine. And the framing of it is quite interesting because he says, like, even though you went off to a faraway alien land, which is one of his favorite phrases for a war that you basically don't understand or has no relation to North Korea. You still did it because you are obedient and you didn't expect anything. And that's what he wants. And that's what he's saying is the main point of the youth is that the government will use them

for wars across the world, matter where, and for construction at home. Those are the two main things he said that the government uses the millions of young people for. For war and for construction. Interesting. Did he bring his daughter, who may or may not be named Kim Jewet, and who may or may not be a possible future successor? Did he bring her along to this event? I think she's still a little bit too young. I don't think she's 14 yet to join, but maybe she was there just to watch. No, she was not there. And so that's, yeah, it was kind of interesting. And she hasn't gone to, I think, you'd look for her more at a children's union event, but she hasn't gone to something like that. I think, I don't know, I would assume they're trying to be, that would be a strange contrast, I feel with her. Chanel and her Gucci and everyone there is basically another funny thing that they can said in the speedage is quote the youth had their right to enjoyment and must have cherished precious dreams but they translated their allowable decisions into practice devoting their

pure conscious and great sincerity to the motherland in other words saying thank you for foregoing any personal dreams and going to construction sites or the country so that doesn't really make sense if the daughters they're wearing Gucci right now Was this event, this 80th anniversary of the founding of the Socialist Patriotic Youth League, which means, by the way, that it was founded within the first six months of the end of the Second World War, you know, during that period of liberation there. So when the Soviets were coming in and running the system, and they found this in January, 1946, so that's why it's the 80th anniversary.

Is this event kind of like a lead-in to or a prelude to the big party Congress that's coming up? Yeah, he still, I've searched high and low through state media. There's no date hint at the Congress yet. But in this speech, he talks about the, quote, lead up to the Congress. He says, this is the great first event in the year of the Congress. And I think it does kind of sound like he's kind of hinting at it being soon. You know, in the lead up to the Congress kind of sounds like it'll be soon, but we still don't know when it's going to happen. I know some of my colleagues are expecting to be around the end of this month.

Yeah, I mean, it still seems like it's going to be soon, just based on my baselining of the practices that are going on for a military parade, which we can see in satellite imagery. The size of it and the kind of stage of it, the scale of what they're doing with the formation training suggests it'll be within a month, I think, but it's just hard to say. And this will be the ninth, if I'm not mistaken, the ninth Korean Workers Party Congress, right? The last one being in January 2021. So this is at the end of the five-year plan period. So it's probably to announce the next five-year plan. What are we expecting? What do we know to happen at this next conference, Congress?

We are expecting a lot of, well, we're hoping and expecting a lot more specific long-term plan announcements usual at the past few party plenums, which is the second highest level of meeting under the Congress. They have been very vague and not giving us very many details. So hoping to get some details on what kind of weapons are focused. on developing and what kind of economic project they're planning in addition to the ones we already know about like the world development factories and housing. So yeah, just hoping for a lot more details on that and that will be mixed in with a whole lot of really long of, you know, same old platitudes and such. Well, it's certainly interesting to see if they make any reference

to the Dehan Ming-guk, the Republic of Korea, in other words, South Korea, and into Korean relations. I wonder if that'll come up in all of the talk. We'll see. Right, yeah, I think that's another good point, Jacko. That'll probably be in that. Right. Okay, well, let's talk about our last story for the day. You're always our eye in the sky, Colin, and you have found some remarkable images of yet another North Korean prison that's in the process of being demolished and rebuilt. This is down in Saraiwan between Pyongyang and the border with South Korea, right? Right, south of Pyongyang. So this is the 11th prison. and some of them have been called the re-education center, the Qa Pesol, by the defectors testimony. But this Saudi Yuan is less well known in terms of what goes on inside, even though it's right,

smack dab in the middle of the city of Saudi War. Yes, it's interesting, Colin, sorry to interrupted, but I've actually been to Saudi One on my last trip to North Korea, I think, in 2019. And I certainly didn't notice that there was a prison right there in the middle of the city. So it's one of those places where foreigners might pass by without realizing. what it is. Maybe. I don't remember exactly how far off the main road is, but it would be pretty easy to

miss something unless it's right on the main road because you don't go really off the main road. It's a tourist, but yeah, it's like a 20-acre walled prison. I think some analysts have speculated it might not be running, operating in the last decade or so. I don't know, but the recent satellite images you can see a lot of people in there, they're demolishing buildings, they're starting to build new buildings. And the important thing here is that I found. since 2023, 11 such prisons where they're doing this demolition.

And some of them they've rebuilt already fully with much more modern-looking buildings. And it all seems to be part of cracking down on the behavior of the population, making the prison system more official, more predictable in terms of how the laws are carried out. That's a big thing that Kim Jong-jana talks about. So, yeah, it's North Korean state media is not talking about this at all. It's just all stuff I found in satellite imagery. So it's unclear exactly what's going on. But there are some parents.

Very interesting. You said, Colin, that this Sarai won prison, the latest of the 11 prisons to be demolished and rebuilt. It looks like, well, there's a question about whether it was actually in use, whether there were prisoners there at the time. And that makes sense. Because otherwise, I was going to ask, you know, if you're destroying a prison, you've got to have a place to store the prisoners during that period, right? Or you've got to have something new ready to move them to before you start destroying old buildings.

Yeah, I don't know. So I think whenever they've done me is that the other prisons that I've looked up, they have not like, they don't raise the whole place. They kind of just demolish some buildings. I think there's a potential to keep prisoners in other buildings while they build new ones. And they've also built one whole brand new prison. I guess they can move them there. But yeah, again, it's just not a whole lot as known about this stuff.

It's very hard to get information about North Green prison system because they just don't talk about it at all. Right. Certainly not in material. material which is available to the outside world. Now, it would be interesting in the long run if better or newer prison facilities meant that North Korea would, you know, make them open to visits by outsiders, like, for example, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on North Korean human rights. I think part of this is about a formalization. I mean, I might have even

talked about this before on the podcast. I don't know, but it's kind of like willingness to open up about it a bit to the outside world. I don't think that we expect them to be that proactive about that. They're not really that concerned about what the outside world thinks about them, let alone the UN. It might have something to do with their allies in Russia, China, I don't know. Interesting. Interesting. Okay. Well, thank you, Colin, for that update. And, yeah, keep us informed us to further changes in the North Korean prison system that you see in satellite photography. Absolutely. Thank you, Jekko. Thank you. 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.