North Korean parliament to convene to approve Kim’s agenda

Seoul:  North Korea’s rubber-stamp parliament was scheduled to convene Sunday to pass decisions made by a major ruling party meeting where leader Kim Jong Un vowed maximum efforts to expand his nuclear weapons program in face of what he described as US hostility.
The North’s official Korean Central News Agency said deputies led by senior official Choe Ryong Hae, president of the Supreme People’s Assembly’s presidium, laid flowers at the statues of Kim’s grandfather and father, the North’s previous rulers, at Pyongyang’s Mansu Hill on Saturday as they prepared for the parliamentary session.
They bowed and pledged to fulfill their responsibility and duty to carry out the decisions made during the eight-day Workers’ Party congress that ended Tuesday, the agency said.
Meetings of the Supreme People’s Assembly are usually brief, annual affairs that are intended to approve budgets, formalize personnel changes and rubber-stamp policy priorities set by Kim and the ruling party leadership.
State media didn’t immediately release details from the current session, which could also approve reshuffles within the North’s Cabinet and State Affairs Commission, the government’s highest decision-making body led by Kim.
During the party congress, Kim called for accelerated efforts to build a military arsenal that could viably target U.S. allies in Asia and the American homeland. He announced an extensive wish-list of new sophisticated assets, including longer-range intercontinental ballistic missiles, nuclear-powered submarines, spy satellites and tactical nuclear weapons.