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7th Workers’ Party Congress, Kenneth Bae Memoir Rekindle Interest In North Korea

Restaurant diners watch a broadcast of the 7th Congress of the Workers' Party of Korea on local television, where North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is seen delivering a speech on Friday, May 6, 2016, in Pyongyang, North Korea.
Wong Maye-E
/
Associated Press
Restaurant diners watch a broadcast of the 7th Congress of the Workers' Party of Korea on local television, where North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is seen delivering a speech on Friday, May 6, 2016, in Pyongyang, North Korea.

North Korea, past and present, is at the top of the international consciousness this week.

The reclusive country convened the Seventh Workers’ Party Congress in Pyongyang on Friday. It’s the highest political gathering the country holds, and the country hasn’t held one in 36 years, before the current leader Kim Jong-un was born. During the Sixth Party Congress in 1980, then-leader Kim Il-sung announced his son Kim Jong-il would succeed him. The second-generation Kim led the country from 1994 until his death in 2011.

“Kim Jong-un is using this as an opportunity to further solidify his role there, his power,” said Rebecca Cruise, the assistant dean of the College of International Studies at the University of Oklahoma. “And this is opportunity to go ahead and talk about policy.”

It’s also an opportunity to mention nuclear weapons, which Kim did during Friday’s speech. NPR’s Elise Hu reports Kim said North Korea had achieved “great success” and “unprecedented results” with a January nuclear weapons test and a February space satellite launch:

Kim's remarks were being closely watched for signs of where he plans to take the reclusive country, which has taken a number of provocative steps in recent months. Kim has shown a much greater willingness to speak publicly than his father, who mostly maintained a self-imposed silence during his 17 years of rule. "[Kim Jong Il] was widely quoted saying that he felt it was best to keep the enemy in the dark. The less he was out there, the less his enemies would have to use against him," says Jean Lee, an American journalist who opened the Associated Press' Pyongyang bureau. Much of her time in Pyongyang overlapped with the final years of the late Kim's rule.

Kim Jong-un has been more visible and slightly less reclusive than his father’s predecessor, with more interaction with the West.

Prisoner Parlay

In 2014, the North Korean government released American missionary Kenneth Bae after new two years in prison on accusations he conspired to overthrow the regime in Pyongyang. This week he published a book about his experience, detailing his experience and what imprisonment is like for foreigners in that country.

“He commented that he was treated, for the most part, okay.” Cruise said. “He says it wasn't a grand hotel or anything, but thankfully he wasn't treated as bad as some others, though there certainly were times when he was interrogated and those sorts of things.”

Bae also thanked former NBA star Dennis Rodman, and credited him with playing a role in his release.

“He's not saying that Dennis Rodman is responsible in the sense that he protested and called for his release, but that in speaking about him, it drew attention to it,” Cruise said.

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Brian Hardzinski is from Flower Mound, Texas and a graduate of the University of Oklahoma. He began his career at KGOU as a student intern, joining KGOU full time in 2009 as Operations and Public Service Announcement Director. He began regularly hosting Morning Edition in 2014, and became the station's first Digital News Editor in 2015-16. Brian’s work at KGOU has been honored by Public Radio News Directors Incorporated (PRNDI), the Oklahoma Association of Broadcasters, the Oklahoma Associated Press Broadcasters, and local and regional chapters of the Society of Professional Journalists. Brian enjoys competing in triathlons, distance running, playing tennis, and entertaining his rambunctious Boston Terrier, Bucky.
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