North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s New Year’s speeches were a key source for insights into policy direction until Jan. 2020, and since then, this tradition has been replaced by multi-day party plenary meetings (Dec 2021, Dec 2022) and the Eighth Party Congress in Jan 2021.

2023 again ended with a multi-day plenum, with the Rodong Sinmun publishing a more than 10,000-word summary of the result a day earlier than expected on New Year’s Eve.

The plenum assessed progress toward realizing the five-year plan outlined at the Eighth Party Congress, and overall it suggests that North Korea