A big event or political conference appears to be underway or planned for the coming days in Pyongyang, NK News analysis reveals.

According to Planet Labs satellite imagery, the parking lot of the April 25 Hotel in southeast Pyongyang appeared to be filled with dozens of buses on Wednesday — a sure sign that thousands of people have gathered in the capital for an event.

Ruling party conferences and other large events took place during the days coinciding with or surrounding all nine previous times this year when the same parking lot appeared full in available, near-daily imagery.

The hotel is also next to military parade training facilities, but there were no signs of practices for a parade as of Dec. 1.

State media has not reported on plans for a major event in the first part of this month, but announced on Thursday that a party plenum will take place in “late December.”

Above image comparison shows the parking lot of the April 25 Hotel and Mirim military parade training base filling up with buses between Nov. 29 and Dec. 1 | Images: © 2021 Planet Labs Inc. All Rights Reserved. Reprinted by permission; Edited by NK News.

WHAT’S THE EVENT?

It won’t be possible to ascertain the exact nature of the event until state media covers it in the coming days or weeks, but there are a few likely options.

One may be the long-delayed Ninth Congress of the Union of Agricultural Workers of Korea (UAWK).

It was originally set to take place in early July but was postponed, likely due to an urgent “food crisis” that DPRK leader Kim Jong Un referred to around a week before it was set to begin. Now may finally be an appropriate time to hold the congress since harvest and planting seasons have ended.

The mystery event may also be related to the 10-year anniversary of former leader Kim Jong Il’s death on Dec. 17, as North Korea tends to place significant importance on round-number anniversaries.

Kim Jong Un hosted a large-scale “National Memorial Service” for the fifth anniversary of his father’s death in 2016, when thousands gathered to hear speeches outside the Kumsusan Palace of the Sun where his mausoleum is located.

If the event is a political conference that lasts multiple days — either starting in recent days or set to begin soon — a state media report may not come out until after it finishes. This was the case in late July, when the Korean People’s Army (KPA) reportedly gathered for a four-day “workshop” and state media didn’t report on it until three days after it concluded.

It may also be that the event has yet to begin, possibly to allow more people to arrive from outside Pyongyang, or to quarantine arriving guests under a set policy or due to suspected cases of COVID-19.

In a possible example of a quarantine at the same hotel just last month, satellite imagery shows that a group of apparent buses (identical to the ones seen there this week) filled the parking lot starting on Nov. 13, five days ahead of the official Nov. 18 start date of the large-scale “Three Revolutions” political conference.

The lot also started to fill up with vehicles on July 20, around four days before the start of the KPA workshop, though this may have also been related to a war veterans conference that took place on July 27.

Finally, it is also possible that the current gathering is related to the party plenum scheduled to take place at the end of this month, depending on whether quarantine restrictions have been strengthened in the face of a new COVID-19 variant that state media has been sounding the alarm over in recent days.

Edited by Arius Derr