Kim’s Latest Union Message is a Reminder that North Korea Still Treats Labor Organizations as Tools of Control First

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un met delegates attending the 9th Congress of the General Federation of Trade Unions of Korea, one of the country’s main mass organizations, and urged them to help achieve the regime’s new five-year economic development goals.

Rodong Sinmun, the official newspaper of the ruling Workers’ Party, reported Thursday that Kim met congress participants the previous day and took commemorative photographs with them.

According to the newspaper, Kim congratulated newly elected officials of the federation’s 9th Central Committee, including its chairperson and vice chairpersons, while encouraging participants at the event.

Kim praised the trade union organization for what he described as overcoming “unprecedented limits and challenges” over the past five years and helping drive forward socialist construction efforts across the country.

“The Party Central Committee firmly believes in the revolutionary spirit and patriotism of all workers and is boldly advancing a new stage of transformative struggle for the country’s remarkable development,” Kim said, according to the report.

He added that demonstrating the spirit of self-reliance and self-sustenance “across all areas of ideology, technology and culture” remains the core mission of the working class and union members at the current stage of socialist construction.

Kim also stressed that workers and union members should “lead the changes of the era under the banner of the three revolutions” and help propel the country toward achieving its new five-year goals.

He said it was important for the trade union federation to fulfill its role as an ideological education organization by preparing workers to become “core forces of national development” and a “powerful vanguard” in carrying out the regime’s so-called three revolutions.

The General Federation of Trade Unions of Korea is one of several mass organizations used by the North Korean government to promote and disseminate party policies among the public. Alongside the Socialist Women’s Union, the Socialist Patriotic Youth League and the Agricultural Workers’ Union, it forms part of North Korea’s four major labor organizations, which workers, women, youth and farmers are effectively required to join.

North Korea said the trade union federation held its 9th congress in Pyongyang on May 11-12 and elected a new leadership team.

Since unveiling major policy priorities for the next five years during a Workers’ Party congress in February, Pyongyang has also been actively holding congresses for affiliated organizations. North Korea previously held the 11th congress of the youth league from April 28-30 and announced that the 8th congress of the women’s union will be held in July.