The North Korean year-end high mass is over. The plenary session of the Central Committee of the Workers' Party of North Korea, which is in power in Pyongyang, ended on Saturday, December 30, after five days of deciding the country's strategic direction, including the launch of three new spy satellites. This shows the growing desire to confront South Korea.
“The task of launching three more reconnaissance satellites in 2024 has been declared,” reports the official KCNA agency. After two consecutive failures in May and June, North Korea successfully launched its first military observation satellite into orbit in November. Since then, the regime has claimed it provided images of key U.S. and South Korean military sites, but has not shown the alleged images.
North Korea is barred from conducting ballistic technology tests by successive United Nations (UN) resolutions, and analysts say there is significant technological overlap between space launch capabilities and ballistic missile development.
South Korean intelligence agencies believe that Pyongyang received crucial technological assistance from Russia, where Kim Jong-un visited in September and met with President Vladimir Putin to successfully deploy this satellite, the Malligyong-1. Experts say deploying an operational spy satellite in orbit would streamline North Korea's search for intelligence information, particularly about its South Korean rival, by giving it access to crucial data ahead of a military conflict.
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“The worst enemy”
During the party meeting, Kim Jong-un said the Korean peninsula was in the grip of a “prolonged and uncontrollable crisis situation” that he said was the fault of the United States and South Korea. He therefore ordered a reshuffle of the administrations responsible for relations with the South in order to “fundamentally change the direction”.
“I think it is a mistake that we should no longer make to view people who call us the 'worst enemy' (…) as someone with whom we can seek reconciliation and unification,” said the North Korean Leader quoted by KCNA.
The two Koreas began a process of rapprochement in 2018, marked by three meetings between Kim Jong-un and then South Korean President Moon Jae-in. But this rapprochement failed and tensions between the two enemies are currently at their peak.
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At the beginning of the party meeting, the North Korean head of state had already called for his country's “acceleration of war preparations”, including its nuclear weapons program, in view of the “confrontational maneuvers” of the USA and its allies.
Record number of attempts
North Korea conducted a record number of ballistic missile tests in 2023. The country also enshrined its status as a nuclear power in its constitution and successfully tested the Hwasong-18, the most powerful intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) in its arsenal capable of reaching the United States.
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For their part, the United States, South Korea and Japan have stepped up military cooperation by activating a real-time data sharing system on North Korean missile launches and increasing joint military exercises in the region. In recent months, American forces have notably sent the nuclear submarine USS Missouri, the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan and a B-52 strategic bomber to South Korea, each time provoking North Korea's anger.
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Pyongyang views the military exercises on its doorstep as a dress rehearsal for a future invasion of its territory and has long viewed its missile tests as necessary “countermeasures.”
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