The Buzz | North Korea sets rare party meeting after economic shortfall

With unusual candor, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un admitted that U.S.-led sanctions, the pandemic and devastating floods have hurt his country’s dismal economy as his ruling party scheduled a rare congress in January to set development goals for the next five years.
Kim announced his first five-year development plan with goals of improving North Korea’s power supply and agricultural and manufacturing production during the last Workers’ Party congress in 2016, its first in 36 years.
But at this week’s meeting of the party’s decision-making Central Committee, Kim acknowledged economic shortcomings caused by “unexpected and inevitable challenges in various aspects and the situation in the region surrounding the Korean Peninsula,” the North’s official Korean Central News Agency reported yesterday.
Experts say the coronavirus derailed some of Kim’s major economic goals after North Korea imposed a lockdown that significantly reduced trade with China — its major ally and economic lifeline — and likely hampered its ability to mobilize its workforce.