This text is from the third version (October-December 2025) of 38 North’s quarterly product, North Korea Briefing, that screens key inner developments in North Korea. For the complete collection, click on right here.
The ultimate quarter of 2025 discovered that North Korean political tradition was getting ready for a serious transition through the Ninth Occasion Congress throughout early 2026 or muddling by a big upheaval in elite cohesion.
Mr. Ri’s Return
Following an 11-month public absence, Employees’ Occasion of Korea (WPK) Secretary Ri Il Hwan returned to the core management ranks on the WPK Central Committee’s thirteenth plenary session in December. Ri’s questionable standing was affirmed when he didn’t attend a not often publicized assembly of the Central Committee Secretariat in January 2025, regardless of being a member.
Ri’s public absence was considerably unprecedented for the Kim Jong Un period. In distinction to another core elites, Ri was not changed, nor did he migrate to a different place and proceed to attend public occasions. Regardless of not being changed on the Secretariat, Ri Il Hwan’s standing as a regime elite remained questionable when his title didn’t seem on former Supreme Folks’s Meeting (SPA) Presidium President Kim Yong Nam’s November funeral committee.
Context and Implications
Ri Il Hwan’s return to management and public life following an almost year-long absence was tied to job efficiency and/or private disciplinary points. His extended absence, lack of personnel motion, and exclusion from a state funeral committee rule out any innocuous explanations. Had Kim Jong Un assigned him a particular mission precluding public exercise, the period would have been shorter. If on medical go away and deemed in good standing, the regime would have moved him to a different submit whereas he recuperated. Had he been merely unwell, Ri would have been listed on Kim Yong Nam’s funeral committee—such funeral committees prior to now included retired elites and even terminally sick energetic officers like Jo Myong Rok and Kang Sok Ju.
This raises questions on Ri Il Hwan’s absence and return. It’s doubtless linked to his job efficiency or patronage ties. The January Secretariat assembly which Ri missed handled two lower-level elites accused of abusing their energy and extreme partying—teams probably linked to Ri, making him accountable. Then again, Ri might have been deemed merely ineffective, and his return to workplace includes intensive scrutiny and heightened supervision. As a Occasion secretary, Ri’s major function is advising Kim Jong Un and submitting insurance policies, however he neither formulates nor implements them.[1] Nonetheless, Ri might have been held liable for issues in media and tradition, together with inadequate enforcement of North Korea’s language expression and tradition legal guidelines or dysfunction throughout the WPK Propaganda and Agitation Division (PAD).[2]
Ri Il Hwan’s return, taken with different latest occasions (see under), suggests a serious change affecting the broader core management.
Inner Safety Picture Ops
On November 18, Kim Jong Un visited the headquarters (HQ) of the Ministry of State Safety (MSS; State Safety Division), the Ministry of Public Safety (MPS), and the Central Public Prosecutors Workplace and the Supreme Courtroom. Visiting the majority of Democratic Folks’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) inner safety, legislation enforcement, and judicial organizations in sequence was extraordinary—virtually unprecedented—for North Korean political tradition.
Making use of some occasions evaluation to this sequence, we’ll take into account the venues, the contributors, and the acknowledged motive and circumstances for these occasions.
Context and Implications
Historic precedent means that “#1 Occasions,” these involving the supreme chief, at inner safety establishments happen earlier than or after main selections or exercise.
These have been HQ occasions involving the organizations’ management and HQ workers. The venues and contributors set up them as discrete picture ops conveying particular person ideological themes: political safety (MSS), public safety (MPS), the authorized course of (prosecutors), and adjudication (the Supreme Courtroom). Taken as a sequence, they convey an total theme: regime safety and stability. This contrasts with sectoral nationwide conferences and conferences, that are extra anonymized and collectivized, drawing bigger populations of lower- and working-level officers centered on broad ideological themes. This sequence involving organizational managers and senior personnel suggests different enterprise—a serious coverage change or energy battle—is at work.
Aside from MPS, these occasions marked the organizations’ eightieth anniversaries.[3] On the MSS picture op, Kim Jong Un mentioned MSS was stood up in November 1945, alluding to when Kim Il Sung consolidated Occasion management over vigilante teams and village elders.[4] But, MSS was formally established in 1973 after splitting the Ministry of Inside Affairs. The prosecutor-court system’s historic document begins with the DPRK’s 1948 institution.[5] By consolidating these basis anniversaries, Kim Jong Un and his public relations advisers have taken artistic license aligning them with the Occasion’s founding anniversary and emphasizing the Occasion’s (and the Suryong’s) management over how these establishments relate to residents.
This raises the query of why now: why revise these anniversaries in 2025, not throughout the Occasion’s seventieth (2015) or seventy fifth (2020) founding anniversary? Earlier engagements occurred at important historic moments: Kim Jong Un’s 2012-2013 visits to MPS and MSS throughout his transition; his second 2013 MSS go to earlier than Jang Music Thaek’s ouster; Kim Jong Il’s 2009 MPS go to earlier than the December 2009 forex swap; his 2010 Supreme Courtroom go to after that coverage’s implementation; and his November 2010 picture op with the MPS-affiliated Inner Safety Forces days earlier than the shelling of Yeonpyeong-do. This precedent, mixed with the revised anniversaries, provides these occasions a deeper subtext than picture ops counsel. It’s extremely possible {that a} elementary change to the operate of the Occasion’s central management, the function of Occasion organs, or a serious initiative within the macro-policy house is within the offing for the Ninth Occasion Congress. The photo-op occasions with inner safety and legislation enforcement foreshadow such a change.
