North Korean authorities gathered state media workers for a major conference this week and demanded the production of “new and fresh” propaganda to fight unapproved beliefs among the population.

According to the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on Wednesday, the Ninth Conference of the Journalists Union of Korea (JUK) took place at the People’s Palace of Culture in Pyongyang over the previous two days — 21 years after the organization’s eighth conference.

In a sign of the event’s relatively low importance to the country’s leader Kim Jong Un, however, he reportedly did not attend or send a personal letter of