My understanding is this was a message to the people of North Korea rather than the regime," the spokesman said. A performance held for a visiting Cuban delegation, including Miguel Mario Diaz’s first visit to the DPRK. The State Merited Chorus mainly did this concert, but the Moranbong Band makes an appearance in the middle. Kim has changed North Korea's internal power dynamics, increasing the influence of the WPK while decreasing the power of the military. [79] In May 2016, He organized WPK's 7th Congress in May 2016, its first congress since 1980. [80] In the congress, Kim became the Chairman of the WPK, which replaced the First Secretary of the WPK. [81] North Korea’s Kim Jong Un has rolled into Russia on an armoured train ahead of his meeting with President Vladimir Putin.

To fit the Theme of playing in the vicinity of Mount Paektu and the importance this region has to the period of the Korean Revolution, the band members wore wartime guerilla uniforms during the performances. After a total of 68 Days of concerts, the Moranbong Band would return home to Pyongyang in December of 2017 for one more performance held on December 29th, 2017. Unfortunately, this performance was no broadcasted on State media but can be seen as an end to the Grand Domestic Tour.

During the 2019 North Korean parliamentary election, Kim Jong Un became the first North Korean leader to not participate as a candidate for the SPA. [82] The constitution was further amended in 2019 by the SPA. [83] References to Juche and Songun were replaced by Kimilsungism–Kimjongilism, and the constitution stipulated that the mission of North Korea's armed forces was to "defend unto death the Party Central Committee headed by the great Comrade Kim Jong Un"; this made Kim the first North Korean leader to be named in the constitution while currently holding power. The chairman of the State Affairs Commission was amended to be the "supreme leader who represents the state", effectively making Kim Jong Un the head of state; [83] previously the president of the Presidium of the SPA was the de facto head of state. The chairman also was named as the commander-in-chief of the armed forces as well as the "supreme representative of all the Korean people". [84] That North Korea chose to highlight the housing complex in its 2023 calendar suggests that it is being treated as one of Kim Jong Un’s major achievements. Attended by Senior Members of the Party, including Marshal Kim Jong Un. This is still considered a quintessential Moranbong Band concert during their golden age. For many years, only one confirmed photograph of him was known to exist outside North Korea, apparently taken in the mid-1990s, when he was eleven. [31] Occasionally, other supposed images of him surfaced but were often disputed. [32] It was only in June 2010, shortly before he was given official posts and publicly introduced to the North Korean people, that more pictures were released of Kim, taken when he was attending school in Switzerland. [33] The first official image of him as an adult was a group photograph released on 30 September 2010, at the end of the party conference that effectively anointed him, in which he is seated in the front row, two places from his father. This was followed by newsreel footage of him attending the conference. [34] Succession Pre-2010 Party Conference speculation

A 2023 calendar recently obtained by Daily NK highlights a terraced housing complex on the banks of the Potong River in Pyongyang. The residential development, which is located in the city’s Kyongru-dong neighborhood, is one of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s signature projects. In April 2012, new documents came to light indicating that Kim Jong Un had lived in Switzerland since 1991 or 1992, earlier than previously thought. [22] Still, “since North Korea’s reconnaissance satellites are an important factor in the event of a nuclear pre-emptive strike, they pose a significant threat to the South”, Yang Moo-jin, president of the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul, told AFP last month. North Korean media described the economy as a "flexible collectivist system" where enterprises were applying "active and evolutionary actions" to achieve economic development. These reports reflect Kim's general economic policy of reforming management, increasing the autonomy and incentives for economic actors. This set of reforms known as the "May 30th measures" reaffirms both socialist ownership and "objective economic laws in guidance and management" to improve living standards. Other objectives of the measures are to increase the availability of domestically manufactured goods on markets, introduction of defence innovations into the civilian sector and boost international trade. [115] The calendar also includes a photograph of an 80-story building that is one of the landmarks of Songhwa Street. There are reportedly around 900 families living in that building.It is a rare encounter between isolated leaders driven together by their need for support in escalating standoffs with the West.