Trend Lines

North Korea’s ruling Workers’ Party has had a busy start to the year. Earlier this month, the Eighth Party Congress was held in the capital, Pyongyang: Eight days of meetings, including a 9-hour work report read out by leader Kim Jong Un himself. Just a couple days after those sessions wrapped up, Kim oversaw a celebratory military parade, the second one since October, featuring a new missile described by state media as the “world’s most powerful weapon.” New analysis of satellite imagery by the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute suggests Pyongyang could be preparing for a new test of a submarine-launched missile. According to Duyeon Kim, an adjunct senior fellow with the Asia-Pacific Security Program at the Center for a New American Security, these showy events, filled with pomp and fanfare, are designed to project strength at a time when North Korea’s economy is reeling from a “triple whammy” of sanctions, COVID-19 and consecutive natural disasters. She joined WP