2021-12-26 | ANONYMOUS

Focus On Food, Economy For 2022: North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un

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<div class="ins_instory_dv_cont"><img alt="Focus On Food, Economy For 2022: North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un" src="https://c.ndtvimg.com/2021-11/di86l9gg_kim-jong-un_625x300_16_November_21.jpg" title="Focus On Food, Economy For 2022: North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un" /></div>
<p class="ins_instory_dv_caption sp_b">Kim Jong Un focused on food and development at a plenary of the Workers' Party of Korea.</p>
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<b class="place_cont">Seoul, South Korea:</b>
<p>North Korean leader Kim Jong Un put the economy front and centre of an agenda-setting speech at the end of a key ruling-party meeting, state media reported Saturday, with no mention of the United States.</p>
<p>Instead of the policy positions on diplomacy for which Kim's New Year statements have been closely watched in recent years, he focused on food and development at a plenary of the Workers' Party of Korea.</p>
<p>The impoverished, nuclear-armed nation has been under a rigid self-imposed coronavirus blockade that has hammered its economy and left it struggling with food shortages.</p>
<p>"Achieving an epoch-making step in resolving issues related to the people's daily necessities was presented as an important task," the official Korea Central News Agency (KCNA) said in a report on Kim's speech.</p>
<p>The pandemic and resulting border closure saw the North record its biggest economic contraction in over two decades in 2020, according to the South Korean central bank.</p>
<p>Concerns have grown about a full-blown food crisis in the country, and a United Nations human rights expert warned in October that the most vulnerable were "at risk of starvation".</p>
<p>Kim, who took power just over a decade ago after the death of his father Kim Jong Il, said at the party meeting that battling the pandemic was one of the main goals for the coming year.</p>
<p>"Emergency anti-epidemic measures must be placed as a top national priority and be vigorously carried out... without even a minor slack, gap or loophole," he said according to KCNA.</p>
<p><strong>'Unstable environment'</strong></p>
<p>While the leader did not mention the United States or South Korea directly, he briefly said Pyongyang would continue to build up its military capabilities.</p>
<p>"The increasingly unstable military environment on the Korean peninsula and the international situation demand the strengthening of national defence capabilities," Kim was quoted as saying by KCNA.</p>
<p>The state media dispatch did not provide any details on what that could entail.</p>
<p>Pyongyang is under multiple sets of international sanctions over its nuclear and ballistic missile programmes, which have progressed rapidly under Kim.</p>
<p>But the worsening economic situation during the pandemic has not blunted those programmes, and North Korea has continued to pursue weapons development, a UN report said in October.</p>
<p>Pyongyang has stayed away from talks on its nuclear programme since the collapse in 2019 of the dialogue between Kim and then US president Donald Trump.</p>
<p>It has also rebuffed South Korea's diplomatic efforts.</p>
<p><i>(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)</i></p>
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source <a href="https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/north-korean-leader-kim-jong-un-focus-on-food-economy-for-2022-2682695">https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/north-korean-leader-kim-jong-un-focus-on-food-economy-for-2022-2682695</a>

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