North Korea’s ruler Kim Jong-un has sworn his country to another year of hardship.

"The struggle in 2022 is a great struggle for life and death," he said in a speech to the plenary session of the Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea.

The body met for five days until New Year's Eve, as the state media reported on Saturday.

Kim Jong-un used a large part of his speech to call for an increase in food production.

He seemed to admit once again that the supply situation in the country is precarious.

The most important task of the new year is to "make radical progress in solving the food, clothing and housing problems of the people," said Kim, according to the state newspaper "Rodong Sinmun".

Friederike Böge

Political correspondent for China, North Korea and Mongolia.

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Unlike in previous years, the ruler did not mention the United States and South Korea at all.

He also did not announce any new weapon systems, did not boast about the clout of the North Korean armed forces and indicated no willingness to talk.

After the fruitless summit in Hanoi in 2019 between Kim Jong-un and the then American President Donald Trump, there were no more negotiations worth mentioning between the two sides.

South Koreans overflows to the north

The speech coincided with the tenth anniversary of Kim Jong-us assuming power after the death of his father Kim Jong-il. Nevertheless, he refrained from taking stock. There is a reason for that: ten years ago Kim started with the promise that the North Koreans would no longer have to tighten their belts in the future. At the latest with the corona pandemic, he clearly missed this goal. For nearly two years, North Korea has kept its borders largely closed, which has brought trade with China to historic lows and largely prevented imports of fertilizers and agricultural machinery. A UN report warned in October that children and the elderly, for example, are at risk of starvation. Most recently, the military's rice reserves were distributed to the population. Kim vowed the nutritional problem,to be resolved in the next ten years, but gave no details.

There is no longer any talk of the limited market-economy reforms that he introduced in agriculture in 2012. Instead, Kim called for more ideological training for farmers in order to raise their class consciousness. "All farms in the country are to be turned into a socialist paradise that is so wonderful that the world can be proud of it," said Kim, according to "Rodong Sinmun". His speech to the Central Committee apparently replaced the tradition of the New Year's address that the "Supreme Leader" had cultivated in the first seven years after he came to power.

Meanwhile, the year began with a rare occurrence at the inner-Korean border. The South Korean military announced that a South Korean citizen had apparently defected to the north. The person was not initially identified. The general staff in Seoul announced that surveillance cameras showed that the person crossed the military demarcation line around 10:40 p.m. on Saturday evening. A military unit was set in motion in vain to prevent the border crossing. An investigation showed that the alleged defector was first recorded by surveillance systems at 6:40 p.m., but was not discovered by the responsible guards. After a North Korean defector to the south also remained undetected for hours last year,the South Korean military had upgraded the surveillance system for the equivalent of around 16 million euros. Seoul announced that the north had been informed of the border crossing. The further fate of the person is unknown.

The regime in Pyongyang has issued an order to shoot at the border as part of its fight against the pandemic.

In September 2020, an employee of the South Korean fisheries authority was shot and burned in North Korean waters.

North Korea called this an epidemic protection measure.