North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and U.S. President-elect Joe Biden / Korea Times file

By Kang Seung-woo

With North Korea set to hold a rare party congress next month, the Kim Jong-un regime is expected to use the much-heralded event to deliver its message to the incoming Joe Biden administration, according to Pyongyang watchers.

In August, the totalitarian state announced that its ruling Workers' Party will convene its eighth congress in January 2021, the first since May 2016, to lay out a new five-year economic plan. But given the U.S. leadership change in the same month, the North is likely to take advantage of the event to exert influence on the Biden administration's policymaking on North Korea.

"The North has historically mentioned its foreign policy at the congresses, so there will be a message to the United States," said Kim Jung, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies, Wednesday.