SEOUL, South Korea — When Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader, arrives at the seventh congress of the governing Workers’ Party on Friday, he will essentially be attending his own coronation. Meeting for the first time in a generation, the congress — in theory, the country’s highest decision-making body — will cement his status as supreme leader.

It will also elect a new central committee, which in turn appoints the party’s Politburo and presidium. Those posts are expected to be filled with a new generation of loyalists whom Mr. Kim has already been elevating through purges and reshuffles, analysts said.

By far the most interesting aspect of the meeting will be Mr. Kim’s promotion of his so-called byungjin policy, which calls for simultaneously achieving two seemingly incompatible goals: a nuclear arsenal and economic development.