Hong Kong (CNN) -- North Korea said Monday that a special conference of its ruling Workers' Party would take place next week, an event expected to solidify the authority of its new leader ahead of a controversial rocket launch.The meeting of party delegates, announced by state media, also comes just ahead of a significant anniversary for the secretive, nuclear-armed state -- the 100th anniversary of the birth of Kim Il Sung, the founder of North Korea.
At the conference on April 11, Kim Il Sung's grandson, Kim Jong Un, is likely to be named secretary-general of the Workers' Party, a key post that would underline his status as "supreme leader" of the insular regime, said Chung-In Moon, professor of political science at Yonsei University in Seoul.
That appointment would be "a very important signal that he's consolidating power and positions from an institutional point of view," Moon said.
It would also mean that Kim Jong Un would ex officio become chairman of the party's central military committee, following in the footsteps of his father, Kim Jong Il, who died in December.
The expected conferring of the new titles on Kim Jong Un is scheduled to happen just before the planned launch of a satellite by Pyongyang between April 12 and 16, using a long-range rocket. Read More
