North Korea readies for party congress

North Korea readied yesterday to kick off its most important ruling party gathering for nearly 40 years, amid persistent concerns of a nuclear test, despite no clear signs of an imminent detonation.

Leader Kim Jong-Un is expected to deliver a keynote address at the opening of today's party congress, which will be minutely scrutinised for suggestions of a significant policy shift or personnel changes in the nuclear-armed nation's governing elite. The last congress was held in 1980 to crown Kim's father, Kim Jong-Il, as the heir apparent to his grandfather and the North's founding leader Kim Il-Sung.

While the agenda of the event is still unknown, its main objective is widely seen as cementing Kim Jong-Un's status as supreme leader and legitimate inheritor of the Kim family's dynastic rule.

The congress is also expected to confirm, as party doctrine, Kim's "byungjin" policy of pursuing nuclear weapons in tandem with economic development.

Ahead of the congress, national and Workers' Party flags lined the broad, rainswept streets of Pyongyang, while banners carried slogans such as "Great comrades Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-Il will always be with us".

Since Kim took power after the death of his father in late 2011, North Korea has carried out two nuclear tests and two successful space rocket launches that were widely seen as disguised ballistic missile tests.