Strengthening Local Party Discipline and Preventing Public Discontent
Corruption and the Politics of Corruption in North Korea
Summary and Limitations of Anti-Corruption Efforts
On January 27, 2025, the 30th Enlarged Meeting of the Secretariat of the 8th Central Committee of the Korean Workers’ Party (KWP) was held, during which two recent incidents were addressed. The first involved approximately 40 local Party officials in Oncheon County, Nampo, who committed misconduct by receiving drinks and entertainment, and the second involved the infringement of property rights by inspectors from the agricultural inspection agency in Usi County, Jagang Province. At the meeting, Kim Jong Un referred to these corruption cases in Oncheon and Usi Counties as serious Party-level cases involving violations of Party rules and acts against the people. It was unusual for Kim to convene a Party Secretariat meeting to publicly reprimand local Party officials for corruption. Rather than exposing the far more extensive and serious corruption within the Central Party agencies of power, Kim elevated commonly occurring cases of officials receiving drinks and entertainment exploiting residents into major national political issues.
Why, then, did the Kim Jong Un regime convene an Enlarged Meeting of the Party Secretariat to address these corruption cases? Will the Kim regime use these cases as an opportunity to launch a full-scale anti-corruption campaign? To answer these questions, this article analyzes the political objectives of the regime’s handling of the Oncheon County and Usi County corruption cases and the politics of corruption in North Korea.
