N Korea’s Kim Opens Key Party Meeting to Discuss Defense, Diplomacy

By Staff, Agencies

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has attended the opening of a key party meeting to decide his country’s diplomatic and defense strategy amid a “changed international situation”.

According to state media, Kim joined the eight enlarged plenary meeting of the Central Committee of the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea [WPK], which opened on Friday.

The meeting, which will likely be held over several days, will discuss “the issue of the state diplomatic and defense strategy to cope with the changed international situation”, as well as review economic activity for the first half of this year.

The meeting has been convened as North Korea seeks to bolster ties with Russia and China during “intensifying Sino-US rivalry and Russia’s war on Ukraine”.

North Korea fired two short-range missiles off its east coast on Thursday, less than an hour after it warned of an “inevitable” response to military drills staged earlier in the day by South Korean and US troops. North Korea has long maintained that such drills threaten its security and are conducted in preparation for a possible invasion of its territory one day.