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The 7th Party Congress in North Korea: An Analysis of Kim Jong Un's Report
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 March 2025
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The single most remarkable feature of the 7th Congress of the Workers' Party of Korea (WPK) was that it took place at all, after a hiatus of no less than 36 years.
Ever since Kim Il Sung decided in the 1950s that his country needed its own way of doing things, which is often summarized under the term of chuch'e, it has been hard to categorize the DPRK as a typical socialist country. North Korea has always been different. It neither joined the military alliance of the Warsaw Pact nor was it willing to engage in the Soviet-led economic cooperation of COMECON. Its ideology moved further and further away from core premises of Marxism-Leninism. With its Hegelian emphasis on “mind over matter”, which in North Korea is called “man is master of everything”, Pyongyang's ideology stood directly opposed to the key paradigm of Marx's Dialectical Materialism. Even from the perspective of the Eastern European socialist brothers, North Korea was therefore a rather odd and even suspicious member of the socialist family, as countless documents unearthed from archival sources reveal. But the fact that a Communist party in power did not hold a congress for almost four decades has nevertheless to be regarded as highly unusual.
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References
Notes
1 This is the conventional English term used in North Korea. In the West, Korean Worker's Party (KWP) is the standard. Both are imprecise, however. Following the official German version “Partei der Arbeit”, Labor Party would be the correct translation of 로동당.
2 The richest source in this regard is the Washington-based Cold War International History Project (CWIHP) at the Woodrow Wilson Center (www.wilsoncenter.org). Among scholars who have published in this field are James Person, Sergey Radchenko, Bernd Schaefer, Balazs Szalontai and Kathryn Weathersby. Inspired by the work done at the CWIHP, I explored East German archives in search of clues on the reconstruction of North Korea's second largest city by East Germany. See Rudiger Frank (1996): Die DDR und Nordkorea. Der Wiederaufbau der Stadt Hamhŭng 1954-1962, Aachen: Shaker.
3 Rudiger Frank, “Power Restructuring in North Korea: Anointing Kim Jong Il's Successor,” The Asia-Pacific Journal, 42-2-10, October 18, 2010.
4 See here.
5 See here.
6 The so-called mass line has even found its way into the constitution (Article 13). On May 12, state media emphasized that North Koreans would endure speed battles of 700 or 7,000 days if necessary. A few weeks later, it became obvious that this was no empty talk.
7 Named after the foundation day of the Army. This symbolism is worth noticing. I interpret it as a sign that the Party is party of the military, as it is part of every other segment of North Korea's society. Declaring a “victory” of the Party over the military would, however, go too far, since such a fight has never really taken place.
8 Robert Carlin: “A Second Look: Media Coverage of the 7th Workers' Party of Korea Congress”, 38North, 17.05.2016.
9 “Detained and interrogated for 10 hours in North Korea”, BBC, 20.05.2016.
10 See here.
11 See here.
12 Congress of the Korean Worker's Party], Rodong Sinmun, 08.05.2016.
13 The formulation “we have nothing to ‘reform’ and ‘open‘” has been used in North Korean publications before, but usually with reference to Western influence and not at such a high-profile event. See for example: “Let us adhere to line of building independent national economy”, KCNA, 17.09.1998, due to geo-blocking best accessible through a Japanese VPN server or through the archive (the latter behind a paywall).
14 Or ‘pyŏngjin‘ if we use the McCune/Reischauer system.
15 The rationale is simple: in lieu of capital and technology, the focus of attempts to increase productivity inevitably is on the remaining factor, labor. Material incentives are underdeveloped in non-market systems, hence ideological motivation including the creation of symbols, slogans, model workers/work teams/factories etc. dominates.
16 Jong Il Kim (1995): Giving Priority to Ideological Work is Essential in Building Socialism.
17 Note that he speaks only about having laid the foundations, not about having attained this goal.
18 For a detailed analysis of such discussions, see Phillip Park (2016): Rebuilding North Korea's Economy, Seoul: Kyungnam University.
19 I noticed that slogan on banners shown prominently during Kim Jong Un's first public appearance as the new leader in December 2011. See Rudiger Frank, ‘North Korea after Kim Jong Il: The Kim Jong Un era and its challenges,‘ The Asia-Pacific Journal Vol 10, Issue 2 No 2, January 9, 2012.
20 Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union denounced some aspects of Stalinism and called for an end to the cult of personality. For a full version of the speech, see here.
21 Often translated as “self-reliance” in very general terms, including the economy, ideology, and national defense. The concept has experienced additions and reinterpretations over the years.
22 Usually translated as “Military First”.
23 This term was popular in the run-up to the 100th anniversary of Kim Il Sung's birth in 2012 and has ever since been mentioned much less frequently. It can be translated as “Strong and Prosperous Great Country”.
24 Referring to revolutions in ideology, technology and culture.
25 KOTRA (2015): 북한 대외무역 동향 [Trends in North Korea's Foreign Trade], Seoul: Korea Trade and Investment Promotion Agency. Stephan Haggard in his blog discusses a few irregularities in related trade statistics but agrees that North Korea imports about 500,000 tons of oil from China annually. See “North Korean Trade and the Oil Mystery”, 09.02.2016.
26 North Korea's official economic plans include: One-Year-Plan 1947, One-Year-Plan 1948, Two-Year-Plan 1949-1950, Three-Year-Plan 1954-1956, Five Year-Plan 1957-1961, Seven-Year-Plan 1961-1970 (extended), Six-Year-Plan 1971-1976, Seven-Year-Plan 1978-1984, Seven-Year-Plan 1987-1993. See Doowon Lee: “Assessing North Korea's Economic Reform: Historical Trajectory, Opportunities, and Constraints”, Pacific Focus VIII/2, Fall 1993, pp. 5-29
27 See “State General Bureau for Economic Development to be Established”, KCNA, 15.01.2011.
28 It is in the eye of the beholder whether the emphasis on alternative sources of energy is the result of a sustainable and environmentalist approach or just born of necessity. In any case, the leader mentioned the elimination of pollution when, a few sentences later, he discussed the necessary modernization of the chemical industry. For a detailed study on that topic, see Robert Winstanley-Chesters (2015): Environment, Politics, and Ideology in North Korea. Landscape as Political Project, Lanham: Lexington Books
29 Andrei Lankov: “Reforming North Korea. It seems that, at long last, North Korea has decided to begin Chinese-style reforms”, Aljazeera, 30.11.2014.
30 For a recent study of North Korea's health care system, see Eun Jeong Soh: “The Emergence of an Informal Health-Care Sector in North Korea”, The Asia Pacific Journal, 14/11, 2016.
31 Occasionally, the English translation of the Korean term련방in North Korean news outlets as “federation” leads to confusion. The North Korean proposal very clearly envisions a confederation or a commonwealth, i.e. two separate entities (“two systems”) under one joint umbrella.
32 Numerous examples of this position exist(ed) outside North Korea, including in East Germany, to explain why having a large military and an active military program does not contradict the self-characterization as a peace-loving country. Germans often referred to the Wilhelm Busch poem of 1900 “Bewaffneter Friede” [Armed Peace]. A fox, pointing at a recently promulgated peace order, sanctimoniously demands that a hedgehog takes off his thorny dress. The hog sees through the fox's intentions and refuses, thus securing peace by being armed.
33 Eric Talmadge: “North Korea will not use its nuclear weapons first, Kim Jong-un tells Congress”, The Guardian, 08.05.2016.
34 “U.S. says N. Korea should first demonstrate denuclearization commitment before talks”, Yonhap, 19.05.2016.
35 “Kim Jong Un tours Mangyongdae funfair”, KCNA, 09.05.2012.
36 See here.
37 The project was for example mentioned prominently in the Prime Minister's report at the annual parliamentary session in April 2015. “SPA Session Reviews Cabinet Work Last Year and Advances Its Tasks for This Year ”, KCNA.
38 Jung-En Woo (1991): Race to the Swift: State and Finance in Korean Industrialization, New York: Columbia University Press
39 Rudiger Frank: “The Kaesong Closure: Punishment or Shot in the Foot?”, 38North, 12.02.2016.
40 Hyung-Jin Kim: “Ex-N. Korea army head, who Seoul said was executed, is alive”, Associated Press, 10.05.2016.
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