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 The isolated North has conducted a series of weapons tests,
including three failed launches of an intermediate-range missile, in
the run-up to the Workers' Party congress starting in Pyongyang on
Friday.
North Korea's young leader Kim Jong Un has aggressively pursued
nuclear weapons and could be looking to a successful test this week
as a crowning achievement. South Korean Defence Minister Han Min-koo
said Pyongyang's fifth nuclear test may come before or around the
time of the opening of the congress.
"North Korea's goal is to be internationally recognized as a nuclear
weapons state," Han told a parliamentary hearing on Tuesday. "We
believe its nuclear capability is advancing."
At the congress, which foreign media organizations have been invited
to cover, Kim is expected to declare his country a nuclear weapons
state and formally adopt his "byongjin" policy to push
simultaneously for economic development and nuclear capability.
It follows Kim's father's Songun, or "military first," policy and
his grandfather's Juche, the North's home-grown founding ideology
that combines Marxism and extreme nationalism.
 Pyongyang citizens "fervently welcomed participants of the congress
who have given all their patriotic passion ... as a new generation
of true warriors of Juche revolution under the leadership of dear
comrade Kim Jong Un," North Korea's official Rodong Sinmun newspaper
said on Tuesday.
Security has been stepped up ahead of the congress.
The Daily NK, a website run by defectors with sources in North
Korea, said that since mid-April, free movement in and out of the
capital had been stopped and security personnel summoned from the
provinces to step up domestic surveillance.
The party congress is the first since 1980, before the 33-year-old
Kim was born. His father and predecessor, Kim Jong Il, who died in
December 2011, never held one.
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While some past party congresses featured representatives from
countries the North has ties with, South Korean officials have said
they were not aware of invitations sent to official foreign guests
for the upcoming event.
North Korea has become increasingly isolated over its pursuit of
nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, and was hit with tightened
U.N. Security Council sanctions in March that were backed by its
chief ally, China, in response to a January nuclear test.
Pyongyang has conducted a flurry of missile and other weapons tests
in the run-up to the congress, although not all have been
successful. It made three attempts last month of what was believed
to be its intermediate-range Musudan missile, all of which failed,
according to U.S. and South Korean officials.
The congress is expected to last four or five days, South Korean
government officials and experts said. Kim may decide to take on the
post of party General Secretary, a position held by his late father,
elevating himself from first secretary.
"It is now his era, and the elders have passed away, and the idea
will be that if he remains first secretary, then he might think he
won't get enough respect because of that," said An Chan-il, former
North Korean military official who now heads a think tank in Seoul.
(Reporting by Jack Kim and Ju-min Park; Editing by Tony Munroe and
Raju Gopalakrishnan)
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