Reuters Military coup in Myanmar and economic crisis in North Korea
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s sister Kim Yo Jong has been assigned a new title and removed from the country’s highest decision-making body, but after she called out South Korea in an insult-laden tirade this week, experts said her relative power remains intact in the dynastic regime.
State media reported a series of promotions, demotions and reassignments that happened over the weekend during a rare congress of the ruling Korean Workers’ Party, and Kim was left out of the party’s Politburo and assigned a lower rank.
Reuters Military coup in Myanmar and economic crisis in North Korea
Leader Kim Jong Un branded the United States North Korea’s “biggest enemy” to be met with increased military capabilities in remarks at a ruling party congress that experts said reveal that he faces the same limited pathways out of his country’s poverty and isolation that his father did twenty years ago.
North Korea’s economy lies in shambles between the double pinch of international nuclear sanctions and the closure of the border with China due to the coronavirus combined with a summer of natural disasters that ravaged cropland, while Pyongyang has shunned a South Korean government that would eagerly help once progress is made on the nagging nuclear dispute.