north korean dictator kim jong-un has
given himself the title
of general secretary of the country's
ruling workers party
now we are not much for titles but in
north korea
they mean quite a lot for kim taking on
a title last used by his father kim
jong-il
is a way to consolidate his authority in
the one-party state
this at a time when the economy is
suffering
due to the corona virus pandemic and
continuing u.s led
sanctions that the country would want to
see the back of
but not at the cost of its nuclear
weapons
and arsenal kim jong-un has pledged to
expand
while again taking aim at the united
states during an ongoing party
conference
this is what he had to say
i quote our foreign political activities
should be focused
and redirected on subduing the us our
biggest enemy
and main obstacle to our innovated
development
unquote and for more on what this means
i'm joined by jungmin kim
correspondent at nk news in seoul south
korea
nk news is a website focused solely on
reporting and analyzing news
from north korea jeong mean welcome
north korean
antagonism towards the united states is
well known
so should we be reading anything into
kim jong-un
calling it the biggest enemy
they did use the term biggest main enemy
but it's not the first time that north
korea called united states like that
it did return this time after a while
and they didn't use that term during the
period of titante that started in 2018
with the singapore summit between kim
jong-un
and u.s president donald trump but
obviously after
donald trump walked out on kim jong-un
during the hanoi summit in 2019
it seems that north korea is thinking
that that could have been a waste of
time and
now they are not going to put much
energy into improving relations with the
united states and the
close future i think that's why they
have reverted back
to their old phrase seeing united states
as the biggest main enemy
what does that mean for the incoming
biden administration
what will the biden administration do
now and how will they be
dealing with kim jong-un moving forward
until now uh u.s president-elect biden
did not share
a much hint about what the policy
direction would be
we do not know yet if he will indeed see
that much has changed between us and
north korea
after they started leader to leader
discussion with kim jong-un
but from north korean side it seems that
for example they said the only
only only method for the usdprk
relations to improve is for united
states to
drop its aka a hostile policy which is
also very poorly
defined it's also something not new it's
very old
it seems that for biden administration
this means
kim jong-un won't be offering any
uh opportunity for dialogue first it
means that by
an administration probably has to reach
out first
um but for now it seems pretty unclear
where we are headed from now on with
north korea
going back to becoming just hostile to
the united states
but john when the core of the problem
still remains on the one hand you have
north korea that refuses to give up its
nuclear weapons and on the other hand
you have the united states
and the rest of the international
community that says unless you give up
those nuclear weapons you will not
receive sanctions relief
so we have this deadlock situation so
what you're saying is it looks like this
will continue
yes i'm pretty sure this is going to
continue for a while
um if you see the readout from the party
congress from
friday which was reported on saturday
north korea not only discussed
the direction towards the united policy
direction towards the united states
but it also focused a lot of column
length
on about their military capacity how
they are going to
beef up their capability even more they
had a very long list of wish lists that
they wanted
um in the next coming years like
tactical nuclear weapons
more nuclear warheads longer range icbm
um and solid fuel icbm these all can
count and
as provocation for the biden
administration
and about sanctions they are saying um
if you look at the economic policies
that they share during party congress
they are
focusing very much on building up a
self-reliant
economy that does not falter regardless
of what happens in the external
relations which means
which probably means sanctions it seems
that they are thinking biden
administration won't be budging that
much
about sanctions relief that's why they
are saying they are just going to hold
on to this leverage
of military capacity jungman came we
leave it there for the time being but
thank you so much for joining us
thank you