SEOUL—After inviting hundreds of international journalists
to cover its first ruling party congress in 36 years, North Korea barred the
media from entering the actual event.
The Workers' Party Congress is the biggest political
convention held in North Korea in generations and is expected to bolster young
leader Kim Jong Un’s power and formalize his "Byongjin" policy to
push simultaneously for economic development and nuclear capability.
The last party congress was held in 1980, before Kim Jong Un
was born, and was staged to legitimize his father Kim Jong Il as the heir
apparent to the North's founding ruler Kim Il Sung, the grandfather of the
current leader.
Kim was expected to address the opening session of the party
congress that is supposed to last for four days, but that part of the event was
closed to the media and not broadcast on state-run television.
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