Kim Jong Un's mixed bag admission of failure

"Almost all sectors fell a long way short of the set objectives," [North Korean leader Kim Jong Un] told thousands of delegates to the Workers Party's 8th Congress, seated in a huge auditorium in Pyongyang.

The country should digest the "bitter lessons" of failure, Kim added, and "be bold enough to recognize the mistakes, which, if left unaddressed, will grow into bigger obstacles."

[...]

Many veteran North Korea watchers believe the country is facing its worst economic crisis since the mid-1990s, when the loss of support from the defunct Soviet Union, compounded by Pyongyang's own mismanagement, led to a famine that killed, by some estimates, more than a million people.

Kim had admitted last August to "shortcomings," which led to a failure to meet the country's development goals, and improve people's living standards. In November, he criticized economic officials for their mishandling of the economy.

[...]

Biden has signaled that he intends to shore up the U.S.'s alliance with Seoul, and avoid the high-stakes summitry with Kim preferred by Trump. For that reason, says Park Hyeong-jung, a veteran Pyongyang watcher at the Korea Institute for National Unification, a government think tank in Seoul, Kim is likely to look elsewhere for support.

  NPR

He and Trump will both be doing that.