North Korea said its botched military satellite launch last month was the “gravest failure” at the ruling party’s latest key meeting, the North’s Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported yesterday.
The enlarged plenary meeting was held from Friday to Sunday, ordering workers and researchers to analyze the failed military satellite launch and prepare for another.
PUNISHMENTS
Photo: AFP
Those in charge of the satellite launch were “heavily criticized,” the report said.
It was the Eighth Enlarged Plenary Meeting of the Eighth Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK), the country’s ruling party.
CANDID ADMISSION
The North Korean rocket plunged into the sea “after losing thrust due to the abnormal starting of the second-stage engine,” Pyongyang said after the launch failure, in an unusually candid admission of a technical problem.
North Korea vowed it would continue to develop its nuclear capability and strengthen solidarity with other countries that oppose what it calls the “US strategy for world supremacy.”
The meeting discussed ensuring self-sufficiency in food supply by increasing the country’s agricultural output and meeting the annual grain production target.
Earlier this year, the South Korean Ministry of Unification said the food situation in the North “seemed to have deteriorated.”
The isolated country is under strict international sanctions over its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs, and its economy has been strained by strict self-imposed border lockdowns aimed at stopping COVID-19 outbreaks.
NEW ROLE
Separately, the KCNA report said that former North Korean United Front Department director Kim Yong-chol, who is a close aide to North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, was named as an alternate member of the WPK central committee’s General Political Bureau.
TENSE RELATIONS
Kim was sidelined after a summit with the US in 2019 failed to reach a deal, a South Korean lawmaker said at that time.
He steered negotiations for the summit working with then-US secretary of state Mike Pompeo.
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