On January 6th an unnamed South Korean government source told the South's semi-official news agency, Yonhap, that the WPK meeting that took place last September rewrote the party's rules to facilitate a hereditary succession. By this account, a full party congress is no longer mandated every five years (there have, in fact, been none since 1980). Instead, a delegates' meeting like that in September 2010-even rarer, since the last one took place in 1966, but perhaps easier to convene and to pack with "yes-men"-is now empowered to change the rules and elect officials. In addition, the party's general secretary will automatically become head of its Central Military Commission (CMC). Kim Jong-eun's first party post is the newly created one of CMC vice-chairman.

A second aim of this rule change is institutional: to reassert party control over the army, whose clout has grown under Kim Jong-il's Songun (military-first) policy. One new rule affirms that "all military activities of the KPA are to be executed under the leadership of the WPK". The fact that this needed to be stated so explicitly indicates that resistance is expected.