Aidan Foster-Carter, Honorary Senior Research Fellow in Sociology & Modern Korea at Leeds University, writes, “Hence while the precise nature of September’s [WPK] meeting remains vague, like its exact date, it looks like a long overdue effort to restore a measure of due process to the Party. If this is in fact a full formal WPK congress, it would be the first since the Sixth Congress thirty years ago in October 1980. It was then that Kim Jong-il, hitherto veiled behind coded references to a mysterious ‘Party Centre’, was finally revealed in the flesh. The speculation is that this new meeting similarly will finally give the world a glimpse of the enigmatic Kim Jong-eun.”

Sung Bae Kim, Senior Research Fellow for the Institute for National Security Strategy in Seoul, writes, “It has been all too evident in the past that the inter-Korean summits held at the end of a presidency have provoked political controversy. But an inter-Korean summit held at any time would still be desirable as long as it is based on appropriate measures related to the Cheonan incident and can contribute to the denuclearization of North Korea.”