North Korean leader Kim Jong Un was promoted to general secretary of the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea, filling a high-level seat that had remained vacant for nine years after his father died.

On Monday, state media reported that Kim was newly appointed to the general secretary position on the sixth day of North Korea’s rare and politically-important Party Congress. Kim had previously been just the chairman of the Workers’ Party of Korea, and his father — Kim Jong Il — was named the symbolic “eternal general secretary” months after his death in April 2012.