Introduction

On a grey May morning in Pyongyang, amid a light rain swirling down and around the monuments, a Korean Workers’ Party (KWP) cadre walked unhesitatingly towards a group of foreign reporters. Sin Chol-ryong was not a particularly important person, he said – a mere factory manager without a private car – but one who spoke with utter confi dence when the foreign cameras were rolling. Asked about the Seventh KWP Congress then underway across the street in the April 25th Palace, beyond an incongruously green expanse and a brand new fountain, he volunteered, “There has been no change.” 1

Sin’s expression of pure, unadulterated continuity encapsulates in many ways the state’s desired experience for the citizens of Pyongyang and the DPRK. Both during the congress and in the lead-up to it, expressions of unbreakable loyalty were rife. The completion of two dams near the Chinese border, Paektusan Youth Hero Dam and Paektusan Songun Youth Dam, emphasised both fealty to the distant holy grounds of the anti-Japanese guerrilla struggle and Kim Jong-un’s own developmental energy. In Pyongyang a Moranbong Band rock concert that concluded the congress anticipated further technological and cultural development while absolutely anchored in celebration of the continuing rule of the Kim family. The Seventh Congress, the fi rst in more than three decades, not only celebrated the unity of the people, army, and party around the person of the supreme leader; it was prefaced by a labour shock campaign – the “70-day Battle” – that would surely have been recognisable to veterans of the Chollima movement of the late 1950s. The sinews of political charismatic autocracy remain stable in North Korea, predicated on steady infl ows of resources, control over the distribution of labour and absolute dominance of public discourse. Such are the traditional methods employed to celebrate a supreme leader. And apart from a handful of new buildings, slightly higher heels among some of the women and a few model spots in the capitol city, things have not changed radically. This is a country that would not merely be recognisable to Kim Il-sung but a country of which he might just as well still be in charge.