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Sources reported that North Korea amended the charter of its Workers’ Party of Korea for the first time in thirty years at its party representatives’ meeting on Sept. 28 of last year. The amendment deleted a requirement to hold party conventions every five years, replacing it with a stipulation that the party central committee would convene the conventions, announcing the date six months in advance.
The amendment also gave the party representatives’ meeting authority in election of the party‘s top organizations and amendment of the party charter, a government source reported.
“So if holding the convention does not go as planned, it would be possible to seize party authority simply through the party representatives’ meeting,” the source explained. “By stipulating that the party’s general secretary can also hold the post of Central Military Commission head, they established an institutional framework so that Kim Jong-un can effectively assume all authority for the party and military simply by succeeding Kim Jong-il as general secretary.”
The source added that the amendment “appears to be a strategic move to hold a party convention or party representatives’ meeting at any time to complete the transfer of power.”　

S. Korean police say Google illegally collected information
South Korea’s national police said Thursday it confirmed that the world’s largest Internet search engine, Google Inc., had illegally collected personal information in the process of providing its Street View mapping service.
The Cyber Terror Response Center, the National Police Agency’s Internet crime unit, has been analyzing hard drives and related documents seized from a raid on the company’s Korean unit, Google Korea, in August last year. Investigators said, “We succeeded in breaking the encryption behind the hard drives, and confirmed that it contained personal e-mails and text messages of people using the Wi-Fi networks.”
Korea is the first to have found evidence, police said.

Chung Mong-joon ousted from FIFA　
Honorary president of the Korea Football Association Chung Mong-joon failed to retain his FIFA vice president title in a vote held at the Asian Football Confederation’s meeting Thursday in Doha.
Prince Ali bin Al Hussein of Jordan garnered 25 votes while Chung got 20 votes from the 45-member AFC executive committee, ousting Chung from the FIFA seat that he has kept for the past 16 years. 35-year-old Prince Ali will serve until 2015.
　　
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