Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un is cleaning house within the Workers’ Party of Korea this week, accusing regional leaders of undermining the country’s socialist character by engaging in corruption and drunkenness.
A series of abuses by high-ranking officials were tabled for discussion at the 30th Enlarged Meeting of the Secretariat of the Eighth Central Committee of WPK on Monday and spotlighted a growing “privileged social stratum” within party ranks.
Kim specifically blasted behavior by party officials in Onchon County of Nampho Municipality and Usi County of Jagang Province as “serious cases of [officials] gravely infringing upon the dignity, rights, and interests of the people while wantonly violating Party discipline and exercising negative privileges.”
Specific violations of WPK standards noted at the meeting included “drinking bouts at public service facilities,” partaking in “practices of corruption” within the party, and “misappropriating [citizens’] property at random by abusing [cadres’] inviolable legal power.”
The intraparty fiasco was reported widely across North Korean state media in the following days — a rare example of government malpractice being covered by national news outlets.
“These malpractices are not only a serious case that could undermine the foundations for strengthening our Party and make the county, occupying one-two hundredth of the country’s territory, a non-Party, non-political and non-socialist region, but also a dangerous signal which directly indicates that a privileged social stratum, seeking more special favours than the people by abusing their authority, may be formed,” the supreme leader warned at the committee meeting, according to state newspaper Rodong Sinmun.
The WPK is the sole governing authority of North Korea, founded in 1949 as a merger between the Workers’ Party of North Korea and the Workers’ Party of South Korea.
Since power was consolidated by North Korea’s founder, Kim Il-Sung, in the 1960s, the party has been deemed a kleptocracy and cult of personality by outside observers.
It is headed by the hereditary pseudo-monarchy of the Kim dynasty, which, for three generations, has been vested with the overlapping offices of general secretary, president, and commander in chief. These three positions held together form the unofficial, all-powerful political office of “supreme leader.”
While it is not without precedent for the supreme leader to rebuke lower party officials publicly for perceived incompetence or malpractice, there has not been such a high-profile and thorough dressing down among the leadership in some time.
North Korean troops are deployed to aid the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but Ukrainian officials report that personnel of the Korean People’s Army have not been seen in weeks.
The approximately 11,000 soldiers were expected to take fewer combat-intensive positions in the conflict, such as guarding bases and patrolling territory already captured by Russian troops, but a series of skirmishes with North Koreans were reported late last year.
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Multiple Korean People’s Army soldiers were taken as prisoners by the Ukrainian military, which posted videos of interrogations to social media sites as proof of North Korean involvement.
In the last two weeks, there has been no evidence of Korean People’s Army activity on the front line. The reason for its withdrawal is not clear.