North Korean leader Kim Jong Un tells party: I'm promoting my younger sister

Kim Jong Un used a meeting of his Workers' Party to
reveal he is promoting his younger sister.
The 33-year-old told the party's Central Committee
that Kim Yo Jong, 28, would become an alternate
member of the politburo, the country's top decision-
making body of which Mr Kim is president.
His sister's promotion "shows that her portfolio and
writ is far more substantive than previously believed",
said Michael Madden, a North Korea expert at Johns
Hopkins University's 38 North website.
He called the move a "further consolidation of the
Kim family's power".
Ms Kim was one of several North Korean officials
blacklisted by the US Treasury in January over
"severe human rights abuses".
Mr Kim praised the country's missile programme
at the meeting
State media is reporting that Mr Kim addressed the
"complicated international situation" during the party
meeting.
He called the country's nuclear weapons a "powerful
deterrent firmly safeguarding the peace and security
in the Korean peninsula and Northeast Asia".
Pyongyang is attempting to develop a nuclear
weapon capable of hitting the US mainland.
In the past few weeks they have launched two
missiles over Japan and conducted their sixth
nuclear test, escalating tensions on the Korean
peninsula and with the United States.
Kim's comments were made before US President
Donald Trump tweeted that diplomacy with
Pyongyang had failed and that "only one thing will
work" when dealing with North Korea.
The US President's recent statements about North
Korea have been criticised by the Labour shadow
foreign secretary Emily Thornberry.
"He is playing games, he is using intemperate,
completely inappropriate language in very dangerous
times because the difficulty will be how will North
Korea interpret that?" she told Sky News' Sunday
with Niall Paterson.
"And there could be a miscalculation, a
misunderstanding that could lead us into terrible
circumstances.
"This is not the way for the leader of the free world
to behave."
The Central Committee of the Workers' Party of
Korea meets in Pyongyang
Two of the men responsible for the North Korean
leader's rocket programme, Kim Jong Sik and Ri
Pyong Chol, were also promoted at the meeting.
North Korea's foreign minister, Ri Yong Ho, who
called Donald Trump "President Evil" in a speech to
the UN, was promoted as well.
He was made a full vote-carrying member of the
politburo.

Tweet