Foreign relations of North Korea
In 2017 Moon Jae-in was elected President of South Korea with promises to return to the Sunshine Policy. In his New Year address for 2018, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un proposed sending a delegation to the upcoming Winter Olympics in South Korea. The Seoul–Pyongyang hotline was reopened after almost two years. North and South Korea marched together in the Olympics opening ceremony and fielded a united women's ice hockey team. North Korea sent an unprecedented high-level delegation, headed by Kim Yo-jong, sister of Kim Jong-un, and President Kim Yong-nam, as well as athletes and performers.
Organization and Guidance Department
There are those, most prominently the defector Jang Jin-sung, who currently argue that the leaders of the OGD are the real leaders of North Korea, and that Kim Jong-un is a puppet. He argues that Hwang Pyong-so, the First Deputy Head of the OGD, through his post as Director of the General Political Bureau of the Korean People's Army, was the real ruler of the country because (Jang believes) he controlled the appointments and dismissals of military officers. He concluded that Kim Jong-un would remain a puppet as long as Kim Jong-il's old proteges still controlled the OGD. Michael Madden of the North Korea Leadership Watch disagrees, claiming instead that the OGD implements the directives of the Supreme Leader, and is not powerful enough to introduce directives itself. In October 2017 the WPK central committee appointed Kim Jong Un's trusted aide Choe Ryong Hae as director.