Kim weighs offensive security measures

Bloomberg

Kim Jong Un urged “positive and offensive measures” to bolster North Korea’s security, as the Trump administration said it was watching for provocations around the regime’s year-end deadline.
Kim issued his call for action during an unusually large and lengthy meeting of North Korea’s ruling Workers’ Party, which continued behind closed doors on Monday in Pyongyang. Donald Trump’s national security adviser, Robert O’Brien, who credited the president with persuading Kim to forego a destabilizing action during the Christmas holiday, said the administration was monitoring the situation.
“President Trump took a different tack with personal diplomacy, and so far we’ve had some success,” O’Brien said on ABC’s “This Week” program. “So perhaps he’s reconsidered that, but we’ll have to wait and see.”
While Christmas came and went without the “gift” North Korea had threatened to deliver to Trump for the holiday, all signals from Pyongyang in recent months have pointed to escalation in the new year. Kim has vowed to take a “new path” in nuclear talks without further US concessions and North Korea promised to issue its “final judgment” on Trump by end of this month.
North Korean state media has so far said little about the ongoing Workers’ Party meeting, although the size and duration of the gathering suggested it was the among the most significant since Kim took power in 2011. The North Korean leader was expected to deliver a New Year’s address on Wednesday, which was being watched even more closely than usual for signs of whether he plans to escalate tensions in the coming months.
During the second day of the party meeting, Kim made remarks “emphasizing the need to take positive and offensive measures for fully ensuring the sovereignty and security of the country as required by the present situation,” the state-run Korean Central News Agency said without elaborating. A spokesman for South Korea’s Unification Ministry said the meeting was the largest party gathering held since at least 2013.
“It could be interpreted as North Korea considering 2020 as a very significant year in terms of managing the nation as well as economy construction,” said Kim Dong-yub, a professor of North Korean studies at Kyungnam University and a former director of nuclear weapons policy at South Korea’s defense ministry.