HONOLULU – The rebuilding of Workers’ Party of Korea institutions since Kim Jong Un’s rise to power is, based on their membership, not a promising development, a North Korea watcher said Tuesday.

Stephan Haggard, political scientist at the University of California, San Diego noted the decline of Politburo of the WPK, particularly after the death of national founder Kim Il Sung in 1995. He said that reason for this was largely because their original membership was dying off and not replaced, as they had long been a rubber stamp body with power concentrated in the supreme leader.