Last five years ‘worst of the worst’ for North Korea

North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un admitted the country's economic development plan had fallen short in "almost all areas" as he opened a rare congress of the ruling Workers' Party, state media reported yesterday. 

Kim called the past five years "unprecedented" and the "worst of the worst" time for the country.

"The surest and fastest way to tackle the current multiple challenges facing us is to make every possible effort to strengthen our own power and our own self-reliant capacity," he was quoted by Yonhap news agency as saying.

The gathering is the first of its kind in five years, only the eighth in the nuclear-armed country's history and comes weeks before US President-elect Joe Biden takes office.

The congress opened on Tuesday in the capital, the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported.

Pictures in the Rodong Sinmun ruling party newspaper showed 7,000 delegates and attendees packed into the cavernous hall, none of them wearing masks. Pyongyang insists that it has not had a single case of the disease – observers doubt the claim – but summer floods put further strain on its finances.

On the first day of his work review, Kim said the results of the last five-year economic development strategy "fell extremely short of our goals in almost all areas", KCNA reported.  The plan was quietly scrapped ahead of schedule last year.

The congress is the top meeting of the ruling party – a grand political set-piece that reinforces the regime's authority and is closely followed by analysts for signs of policy shifts or changes in its top ranks.

Kim's sister and key adviser Kim Yo Jong was among the officials elected to the praesidium of the congress, in a sign of her increasing standing.

The last congress in 2016 – the first in almost 40 years – cemented Kim's status as supreme leader and the inheritor of his family's dynastic rule, which spans 70 years.