North Korea Celebrates 2021 with Fireworks in Pyongyang

For years, New Year’s Day has been among the biggest events on the North Korean political calendar, an occasion for its rulers to address their people and the world. Yet it’s unclear what Kim Jong Un has planned.

The secretive state has so far said nothing about whether Kim will return to tradition and personally deliver an address Friday, or surprise the world again like last year when he released a more than 4,000-word report instead. Kim could also save his rhetorical ammunition for a Workers’ Party Congress planned for early January -- one of his most substantial political events since he took power almost a decade ago.

In any case, Kim’s next big address will be watched for the first signals of his approach to the U.S. after Joe Biden‘s November election victory. Kim, 36, is one of the few world leaders yet to congratulate -- or even acknowledge -- Biden’s defeat of President Donald Trump, who dispensed with decades of American foreign policy to hold three meetings with the North Korean leader.

In his New Year’s report last year, Kim said that he wasn’t bound by a self-imposed testing moratorium on nuclear and long-range missiles he put in place to facilitate talks with Trump. Kim called for “shocking actual action” to make the U.S. “pay for the pains” suffered under the Washington-led sanctions.