Once in a lifetime

THE last time North Korea’s ruling Workers’ Party, the KWP, held a national congress was in October 1980, when its present leader, Kim Jong Un, was not even born. The meeting’s main purpose was to formalise the party’s graduation from a traditional Marxist-Leninist dictatorship to a dynastic one. Mr Kim’s father, Kim Jong Il, was crowned as dauphin to his own father, Kim Il Sung, the country’s founding leader. The eldest Kim died in 1994 but, even in death, remains the country’s “eternal president”. Meanwhile party doctrine largely ditched Marx, Lenin and the rest in favour of Kim Il Sung’s own ideology of juche, or self-reliance (real meaning: distrust, confront and rob foreigners). Kim Jong Il ruled until his death in December 2011 without feeling the need ever to convene a party congress. Yet his son is preparing to preside over one, starting on May 6th. In the world’s most closed political system, it is not easy to work out why.

Precedent is no explanation. In 1980 five-yearly congresses were decreed. But a 35-year gap has opened since. The calendar imposes no more pressure on Kim Jong Un than it did on his father. Moreover, it will be embarrassing not to welcome foreign bigwigs. In 1980 177 delegates came from 118 countries, including Robert Mugabe, then Zimbabwe’s prime minister; the president of Guinea, Sékou Touré; and a Chinese delegation led by the late Li Xiannian, one of an “immortal” first generation of revolutionary leaders. The upcoming congress, it seems, will be a North Koreans-only affair. Kim Jong Un’s continuation of his father’s pursuit of a nuclear arsenal and the missiles to deliver it—most recently the claimed test of a submarine-launched ballistic missile on April 23rd—has isolated their country even further. An offer this week to halt nuclear testing in exchange for an end to annual American-South Korean military exercises was swiftly dismissed. The congress will highlight the flip side of juche. North Korea really is on its own.