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June 23, 2026 - North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has unveiled a major campaign to modernize the country’s coal industry and rebuild coal-mining communities nationwide, while reaffirming plans to expand nuclear and military capabilities and reshuffling senior leadership positions, according to state media. The decisions were announced during an enlarged plenary meeting of the Central Committee of the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK) held from Saturday to Monday, the ruling party newspaper Rodong Sinmun reported Tuesday.
The meeting’s main agenda item was a plan to overhaul the coal sector, with Kim emphasizing the need to eliminate the industry’s “century-old backwardness” in order to achieve the DPRK’s five-year economic plan adopted this year as well as medium- and long-term development.
To this end, he called for “technically and culturally transforming” the coal industry alongside his 20×10 regional development initiative, which seeks to build new economic facilities in North Korea’s less developed areas. He also highlighted housing shortages facing coal miners as a major issue for the ruling party.
“He stressed that the project to transform coal-mining villages nationwide is a grand and extensive construction undertaking no less significant than the project to transform rural housing throughout the country,” Rodong Sinmun reported.
To enable full-scale construction from next year, Kim ordered the creation of “construction command headquarters” for coal-mining districts at the central and provincial levels, the bolstering of design and construction forces and preparations to secure equipment, materials and transportation.
In particular, he ordered efforts to transform Chonsong Youth Coal Mine — the district where he cast his vote in North Korea’s parliamentary election earlier this year — into a “standardized modern coal mine.”
North Korea relies heavily on coal for energy, and the plenum’s specific focus on revitalizing the industry appears related to the country’s energy supply constraints at a time when Kim is pushing hard for economic growth, according to Peter Ward, a research fellow at Seoul’s Sejong Institute and NK Pro contributor.
“There’s an economic security component to this,” he told NK News. “They’re not always able to completely avoid [energy imports], but the ideal is to have as much domestically produced energy as possible.”
Ward added that Kim’s focus on the coal industry alongside his signature regional development drive appears to suggest “he’s not pleased with the results that he’s seeing” from the sector.
However, he added that it will take more than simply improving houses for miners to overhaul coal production and the industry’s labor supply problems.
“It’s quite clear that a lot of these mines will be poorly equipped, the technology will be old and there will be a need for additional capital and more equipment in these places,” he said.
“They might need to open up more mines or rehabilitate mines that are currently in a state of disrepair,” he added.
However, Ward said focusing solely on technical issues would only address part of the problem, and a comprehensive effort to modernize the coal industry would require upgrading infrastructure and improving compensation and incentives for miners.
Leadership Changes
Another prominent item on the three-day plenum’s agenda was a leadership reshuffle, which saw Kim’s right-hand man Jo Yong Won recalled from his position as chairman of the parliament’s Standing Committee and appointed head of the party’s powerful Organization and Guidance Department (OGD), which oversees personnel matters. He was also elected secretary of the WPK Central Committee.
Meanwhile, outgoing OGD director Kim Jae Ryong was removed from the Presidium of the WPK Political Bureau and as a party secretary. However, he appears to retain his position as a politburo member.
Kim Jae Ryong’s demotion — and Jo Yong Won’s return to his former department — comes just six months after his promotion to the Presidium at the WPK’s Ninth Congress, where he also took up his OGD role after a little over a year as the ruling party’s discipline czar.
The demotion appears to be a “significant setback” for Kim Jae Ryong, but the fact that he still holds his politburo membership suggests he has not been completely eliminated from the political stage, Lee Junhee, a researcher at Kyung Hee University, told NK News.
While it is possible Kim Jae Ryong was punished after incurring the leader’s displeasure over personnel matters, Lee said the downgrade is more likely related to perceived failures during his tenure as director of the Discipline Investigation Department, as he only served as OGD chief for a few months.
However, the expert added that his retention as a politburo member suggests possibilities beyond a permanent purge, and that Kim Jong Un may have disciplined Kim Jae Ryong after a rapid rise that could have led to overconfidence.
“Kim Jong Un has often weakened his most influential subordinates by subjecting them to temporary punishment before bringing them back into favor, thereby ensuring that each carries some political baggage,” he explained.
If Kim Jae Ryong was indeed punished, Lee suggested the leader may have “calibrated the severity” of his punishment to avoid disrupting the balance within the politburo.
Another explanation is that the former premier could be “too valuable a subordinate” for Kim Jong Un to discard entirely and could make a comeback in due course, Lee said.
The researcher added that it is also possible Kim Jae Ryong’s removal may not be a punishment at all, and could simply be down to a new assignment “where his abilities can best be utilized.”
State media did not explain Kim Jae Ryong’s sudden fall from grace, but the former cabinet premier was not the only personnel-related official who was removed from his post during the plenum.
The ruling party’s Central Military Commission decided to hand over Maj. Gen. Pak Hui Chol, the deputy director of the Organization Department of the DPRK military’s General Political Bureau, to judicial authorities for investigation over corruption allegations, Rodong Sinmun reported. Maj. Gen. Kim Yong Ul was appointed as Pak’s successor and elected as a member of the party Central Committee.
Public references to investigations involving senior military officers are relatively uncommon in major plenum reports, but they align with Kim Jong Un’s increased rhetoric in recent years about stamping out purported corruption and inefficiency in the country’s leadership.
Highlighting North Korea’s history of actively reporting cases of cadre corruption in detail under the current leader, Lee said the decision to publicize cases like Pak’s can be viewed as a form of “authoritarian communication.”
“Kim Jong Un, as the supreme leader, reigns as the ultimate problem-solver who resolves the country’s difficulties, while popular dissatisfaction is redirected toward lower-level officials, thereby suppressing demands for more fundamental systemic change,” he said.
Plenum delegates also elected Ri Ho Rim as an alternate politburo member and director of the Central Committee’s Light Industry Department.
The focus on developing the light industry was also evident in Kim’s concluding speech, in which he called for improving the quality of consumer goods and promoting the construction of “modern light industry factories,” according to Rodong Sinmun.
The plenary meeting also approved measures aimed at increasing the authority and effectiveness of city and county people’s committees, part of a broader push to improve local governance and support regional development initiatives.
Military Modernization
The meeting also addressed military and defense issues, with Kim reaffirming North Korea’s policy of strengthening its nuclear forces and conventional military capabilities to deal with the “nuclear war” threat posed by the U.S.-led “hegemonic forces.”
According to Rodong Sinmun, Kim reaffirmed North Korea’s status as a nuclear weapons state and continued expansion of the country’s nuclear forces as “the most correct and only path” for strategic deterrence.
“The speech assessed the position and role played by increasingly sophisticated nuclear technology in the future development of our war deterrent and stressed that, on this basis, much larger, more innovative and more inspiring plans would be accelerated,” the newspaper reported.
Kim’s rhetoric echoes his frequent statements calling for an “exponential” increase in North Korea’s nuclear arsenal.
As part of efforts to bolster the military, Kim called for accelerating construction of a 10,000-ton-class strategic guided missile cruiser, a project reportedly approved by the party’s Central Military Commission in April.
The North Korean leader first mentioned the 10,000-ton destroyers — double the size of the country’s current largest warships — during a ship inspection earlier this month, highlighting his ambitious naval modernization plans.
In this week’s meeting, Kim also urged the development of new conventional weapons, modernization of defense-industrial facilities, construction of additional military bases — including naval facilities — and ongoing fortification efforts along the inter-Korean border.
Foreign Affairs
On foreign policy, Kim largely repeated familiar rhetoric accusing the U.S. and South Korea of escalating military tensions through joint military activities, nuclear planning mechanisms and the development of nuclear submarines.
He reiterated Pyongyang’s position that South Korea remains its “most hostile state” and emphasized that the DPRK must continue its “struggle against the enemy” south of the border, Rodong Sinmun reported.
Kim also accused Washington of ramping up regional military pressure and worsening the global situation through its “unlimited geopolitical ambitions and abuse of power,” along with boosting cooperation with Seoul to prepare for “nuclear war” targeting the DPRK.
Meanwhile, the North Korean leader condemned Japan for its moves toward becoming “a war state” by strengthening its military. He also took aim at international adversaries by blaming “modern forms of nationalism such as America First, Jewish restorationism, Ukrainian neo-Nazism, and Japanese militarism” for furthering international instability.
Kim emphasized the need to advance cooperation with other “anti-imperialist independent” countries and adopt a more security-focused approach to combat “imperialist aggression and war maneuvers.”
“In the field of foreign affairs, all external relations must be proactively and vigorously developed from the standpoint of subordinating them to the defense of national interests and the strengthening of national prosperity and military power,” he said.
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