Executive Summary:
- The Ninth Congress of the Workers’ Party of Korea in February heralded the start of a new geopolitical era in Northeast Asia. North Korea’s nuclear program is now codified in party doctrine, insulated from negotiation, and institutionally designed to outlast any diplomatic framework Washington might devise.
- The congress formally institutionalized Kim Jong Un’s drive to build nuclear and conventional forces in parallel, stipulating pre-emptive strike capabilities in party doctrine and announcing a sweeping five-year military modernization agenda—shifting the nuclear deterrent’s declared mission from leverage to active war-fighting.
- Kim Jong Un’s “hostile two-state” doctrine formally reclassifies South Koreans from “ethnic compatriots” to citizens of a hostile enemy state, dissolving the psychological barrier against nuclear use on the peninsula.
- Beijing’s diplomatic signaling has strategically enabled Pyongyang’s nuclear policy shift, consistently omitting references to “denuclearization” following summits between the PRC and the DPRK and speaking instead of “solidarity.”
- Beijing further moved to normalize ties following the congress, reopening Beijing–Pyongyang passenger air and rail routes, and promoting plans to make the city of Dandong a post-sanctions trade hub.
The Ninth Congress of the Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK) in Pyongyang, held from February 19–25, institutionalized the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) as a permanent nuclear weapons state. This marks a definitive end to the 2013 economy–nuclear “byungjin,” or parallel development, which called for promoting nuclearization and economic development in tandem, and stakes proliferation on “hostile” U.S. policy toward the DPRK while codifying a “no first use” policy (National Assembly Research Service, December 17, 2013). By formally replacing its earlier strategy with one focused on developing conventional and nuclear weapons in parallel, the congress foreclosed the premise of future disarmament.
Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un also used the congress to redefine inter-Korean relations as a fixed state of belligerence between hostile nations, replacing the ethnic nationalism of his predecessors with an “Our State First” ideology (Choson Sinbo, October 8, 2022; Rodong Sinmun, February 26). By removing language such as the “peaceful unification of the fatherland” and “great national unity” in the WPK Rules, and codifying the DPRK’s relationship with South Korea instead as “the most hostile state-to-state relationship,” Kim has eliminated clear paths back to the prior status quo (Rodong Sinmun, February 26). These doctrinal changes are backed by hard organizational reforms, such as the dismantling of traditional unification organs and the absorption of inter-Korean affairs directly into the ministries of foreign affairs and national defense.
Beijing Green-Lights Nuclearization
Tacit support from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has enabled Pyongyang’s shift. Over the past year, Beijing has recalibrated its policy toward the DPRK, omitting reference to denuclearization in joint statements and accepting proliferation as a new reality (China Brief, November 25, 2025). A January 2026 summit between PRC and South Korean presidents Xi Jinping and Lee Jae-myung clarified this shift when Xi refused to respond to Lee’s appeals for intervention (PRC Ministry of Foreign Affairs [MFA], January 5; Associated Press, January 7). By removing the precondition of denuclearization from its diplomatic lexicon, Beijing has created the permissive strategic space for Pyongyang to execute the Ninth Congress’s hardline reforms. For the PRC, this restores the optics of socialist solidarity without incurring the reputational cost of openly defending Pyongyang’s arsenal (China Brief, July 26, 2024). For Kim, it provides a guarantee that has allowed him to rewrite the DPRK’s constitution and strategic posture without fear of Chinese retaliation.
Beijing’s reaction to the Ninth Congress confirms its new position. On February 23, Xi sent a congratulatory telegram that framed the gathering as part of a historical transition between past and future (承前启后). Xi used this same formulation during his 2019 state visit to Pyongyang. But while in 2019 it conferred legitimacy on the traditional bilateral friendship, in 2026 it was conferring legitimacy on a congress that had explicitly abandoned reunification, suggesting that Beijing interprets Kim’s doctrinal shift less as destabilizing nuclear brinkmanship and more as a rational strategic adaptation (Xinhua, June 20, 2019; MFA, February 23).
This shift, particularly in contrast with Beijing’s responses to earlier WPK congresses, was visible on March 31, when Propaganda Department head Li Shulei (李书磊), on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leadership, attended a reception at the North Korean embassy in Beijing celebrating the Ninth Congress. When in 2016 Xi himself received a WPK delegation to be briefed on the Seventh Party Congress, producing a readout that still urged all sides to “stay calm, exercise restraint, and enhance communication and dialogue” (保持冷静克制，加强沟通对话), and in 2021 Foreign Minister Wang Yi (王毅) sent a congratulatory telegram, those engagements merely preserved Beijing’s traditional stance of balancing solidarity with restraint. Deploying Li to celebrate a congress that enshrined nuclear permanence and the hostile two-state doctrine, with no corresponding call for restraint or dialogue, effectively elevates a routine embassy event into leader-level ratification of the doctrinal shift (MFA, June 1, 2016; MFA, January 29, 2021; Xinhua, March 31).
Beijing sustains its tacit support for North Korea by privileging party-to-party channels over formal state diplomacy. The institutional core of this approach is the Party’s International Liaison Department (ILD), which functions as the primary conduit for managing DPRK affairs, rather than the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) (International Crisis Group, May 19, 2011). This is in part a function of the bilateral relationship being one between socialist states (China Brief, July 26, 2024). It is also a product of the MFA, as a state organ, being bound by international treaties and UN Security Council resolutions, structurally committing it to denuclearization in formal diplomacy. By operating outside these legal constraints, the ILD can manage inter-party relations through the logic of socialist fraternity rather than international law. [1]
The appointment of Liu Haixing (刘海星) as head of the ILD on September 30, 2025 also suggests a deepening of the security aspect of the bilateral relationship. Liu’s prior role as executive deputy director of the Office of the Central National Security Commission, a body chaired by Xi, could indicate an intention to reclassify management of relations with the WPK as a component of Beijing’s national security architecture, enabling deeper alignment with a nuclear-armed Pyongyang (ILD, March 31; China Brief, November 14, 2025, February 17).
Tripartite Ecosystem Provides Further Support
The Ninth Congress explicitly championed a transition toward a multipolar world. It framed Pyongyang as a proactive, anti-imperialist vanguard within a restructuring global order, and its nuclear arsenal as a guarantor of peace amid global instability that is a result entirely of U.S. hegemonic policies. Beijing explicitly mirrored this framing in Xi Jinping’s February 23 congratulatory telegram, which pledged to work with Kim amid “global turmoil” (变乱交织) to open new chapters of socialist friendship (MFA, February 23; Rodong Sinmun, February 26).
This aligns the DPRK closely with both the PRC and Russia in a trilateral grouping that has developed rapidly over the last year. Kim’s attendance at the September 2025 military parade in Beijing was both his first at a multilateral event and his first public appearance alongside Xi and Russian president Vladimir Putin. Kim leveraged that appearance to extract the omission of “denuclearization” from the official PRC readout of his summit with Xi. The following month, he hosted PRC Premier Li Qiang (李强) and Russia’s security council deputy chairman Dmitry Medvedev, where the three witnessed nuclear missiles parade through Pyongyang’s Kim Il Sung Square—a display that confirmed denuclearization is no longer an objective of either power (China Brief, November 25, 2025).
PRC–DPRK relations are also being institutionalized below the summit level. The Jilin G331 Border Tourism Corridor opened in September 2025, encouraging increased travel between the two states, and Liaoning province’s Dandong expansion envisions new airport and port infrastructure designed as a post-sanctions trade hub (China Brief, November 25, 2025). Following the congress, Beijing took further steps to connect the two countries. On March 12, the Beijing–Pyongyang passenger train resumed service after a six-year suspension, selling out all tickets; and Air China announced the resumption of its direct Beijing–Pyongyang route (Reuters, March 10; Beijing Daily, March 11). Foreign ministry spokesperson Lin Jian (林剑) justified these measures by saying that the two countries are “friendly neighbors” (友好近邻) and that the resumption of travel would “facilitate … friendly exchanges” (便利 … 友好交往) between their peoples (MFA; Joongang Ilbo, March 16).
The speed of this bilateral reopening reflects more than logistics. Xi’s February 23 telegram specifically directed relevant departments and local governments to implement the leader-level “important consensus” (重要共识), giving border provinces the clearance to accelerate cross-border infrastructure on a timeline tied directly to the congress’s conclusion (MFA, February 23).
Pyongyang’s revitalized alliance with Moscow is also a key element behind its codification of a permanent nuclear posture. The June 2024 bilateral Treaty on Comprehensive Strategic Partnership established a legal framework for military and logistical cooperation whose infrastructure of border logistics and arms pipelines is expensive to build and structurally bound (Congressional Research Service, June 13, 2025). This cooperation is financially insulated by settling trade in Renminbi (RMB) and Rubles, as well as via closed-loop barter systems that bypass Western financial surveillance.
The deepening trilateral relationship marks a restructuring of Eurasia’s political-security architecture. Moscow has clearly benefited through the combat deployment of over 10,000 Korean People’s Army troops to the front in Ukraine (Rodong Sinmun, February 26). In return, Pyongyang has extracted advanced military-technical assistance, combat experience for its officer corps, and potential transfers of aerospace and nuclear submarine technologies that could alter the DPRK’s second-strike survivability. While divergent interests remain, sunk costs reinforce cooperation. Pyongyang has anchored itself to a veto-wielding patron that has openly declared DPRK denuclearization a “closed issue” (Reuters, September 26, 2024).
‘Hostile Two-State’ Doctrine Removes Peninsular Nuclear Constraints
The most consequential output of the Ninth Congress is the operationalization of the “hostile two-state” doctrine. By formally severing the mandate of peaceful reunification, Kim Jong Un has eliminated the psychological constraints against nuclear use on the Korean Peninsula. Under prior DPRK doctrine, the framing of South Koreans as fellow compatriots of the same ethnic nation created an implicit psychological threshold against deploying nuclear weapons on Korean soil.
This doctrinal shift moves Pyongyang’s nuclear posture from declarative deterrence to what Kim Jong Un called active “war-fighting capability” and “offensive deterrence” (Yonhap, April 11, 2023; Rodong Sinmun, February 26).
The congress moved to operationalize this shift by prioritizing mass deployment of 600 mm super-large multiple rocket launchers and short-range ballistic missiles capable of carrying tactical nuclear warheads. A five-year defense development plan guarantees that these deployments will take place in the coming years (YouTube/KBS News, February 20; Rodong Sinmun; NK News, February 26). These changes reflect the DPRK’s shift from exploiting its nuclear arsenal as a means to extract concessions from Washington to integrating them into its war-fighting posture.
Conclusion
The Ninth Congress of the Workers’ Party of Korea declared the start of a new geopolitical era in Northeast Asia. Kim Jong Un has navigated the transition from a pariah state calibrating its nuclear program as a bargaining chip to a permanent nuclear power constitutionally anchored within a revisionist bloc deliberately structured to be self-sustaining, sanctions-resistant, and immune to the diplomatic frameworks Washington has spent three decades constructing.
The pivot away from “denuclearization” in Pyongyang’s party charter, Beijing’s diplomatic readouts, and Moscow’s declaratory policy reflects a coordinated decision that has become institutionally embedded and reinforced across political, military, and physical infrastructure. The congress codifies proliferation, as enabled by Beijing and Moscow. Washington’s insistence on “complete, verifiable, and irreversible denuclearization” (CVID) has thus become a geopolitical phantom. It cannot expect Beijing to enforce a sanctions regime it is actively dismantling, or against a country with whom Beijing’s official discourse foregrounds “solidarity” (团结) in the rhetorical space once held by “denuclearization.”
Notes
[1] The power of the ILD was underscored during an episode in 2016. When Foreign Minister Wang Yi described PRC–DPRK ties as “a normal state-to-state relationship” (国与国之间的正常关系), it triggered debate even among Chinese analysts over whether Beijing was recalibrating its posture—no longer treating Pyongyang as an ideological ally, but as a nuclear-armed source of regional instability (Chosun Ilbo [朝鲜日报], March 9, 2016). This is because a “normal relationship” entails engagement in accordance with the UN Charter and generally recognized international norms, as a scholar linked to the PRC security services pointed out (China National Defense News, March 11, 2016). Framing the bilateral relationship in terms that indicated alignment with international norms suggested to some the rising power of the MFA in the DPRK portfolio. The PRC’s “principled position” (原则立场) on peninsular denuclearization, however, has not lasted.
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