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Next week you may well be settling into the sofa, very full and quite drunk, to watch the Queen's Christmas Message, or to give the proper title, Her Majesty's Most Gracious Speech.

But there's another festive address that you should pay attention to, made by another unelected head of state: Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un.

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Each year the North Korean despot gives a New Year speech. It's slightly different in tone from Queen Elizabeth's.
Her Majesty is unlikely to address her viewers and subjects as 'comrades', dwell on the details of projects like the "catalyst production base and phosphatic fertilizer factory" or start by saying: "I feel my heart swelling with the pride in waging the revolution shoulder to shoulder with a great people."
But like the Queen's speech, the Chairman's address is an assessment of the year gone and a look ahead to the one to come. In such an opaque regime, that insight is important.

Image: The new year speech tradition was started by Kim Il Sung (L) but ignored by his son Kim Jong Il

The address also seems to be particularly important to Kim: he was the one who revived the tradition, started by his grandfather Kim Il Sung but skipped by his father Kim Jong Il, in 2013.
In 2017, Kim promised to 'complete' the North's nuclear weapons programme - and indeed we had a year of missile launches and nuclear tests that took the Korean peninsula close to war.
Last year's speech turned out to be an excellent guide for North Korea's actions in 2018. Kim recognised the effect of sanctions, calling them "the harshest-ever challenges" and sanctions relief has been a repeated and restated goal throughout 2018. Maximum pressure was being acknowledged in Pyongyang.
The main focus of the world was of course on North Korea's nuclear capability. Here, Kim declared "definite success", saying: "we have created a mighty sword for defending peace."
Something that wasn't much noted at the time came later on in the speech though. The North Korean leader said: "The nuclear weapons research sector and the rocket industry should mass-produce nuclear warheads and ballistic missiles."

Image: Kim Jong Un and Moon Jae-in with their wives in September at the summit of the Paektu Mountains

Recently, reports based on satellite images have suggested that the North is continuing its nuclear weapons programme. Some have framed this as a deception but Kim said this quite publicly in his speech. If 2017 was the research phase, 2018 was the production run. North Korea has not pretended otherwise.
But there were also hints about North Korea's change of direction diplomatically and economically. Kim said: "A turn should be brought about this year in improving the people's standard of living." Later, in April, Kim stated that, a nuclear capability achieved, all efforts would now be on the economy.
He also hinted that he was open to more engagement with South Korea, saying: "We truly wish the South a successful Olympics." That Olympics turned out to be a breakthrough moment, with the North Koreans sending a delegation, and North and South even fielding a joint ice hockey team.

Image: North Korean cheerleaders watch the united Korea's ice hockey team at the winter Olympics

The culmination of this outreach was of course the June summit in Singapore with Donald Trump. It was striking here that Kim used his undoubted diplomatic triumph to tell an economic story as well: pictures of the glitzy towers of Singapore were shown by Korean state television.
Usually anything that shows the wealth of capitalist countries is banned but Kim positively flaunted it, saying "Singapore is clean and beautiful and every building is stylish," and that he hoped to learn from its development.

Image: North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un shakes hands with US President Donald Trump during a historic summit of the two nations.

This was unthinkable only a year before but again, the focus on the economy was previewed in Kim's speech six months earlier.
A recent analysis of Kim's public appearances by a South Korean news agency confirms this emphasis. In 2018, Kim made 123 public outings, giving helpful on-the-spot guidance and the like. Of those, 52 were related to diplomacy and 43 were about economic matters. The year before, the majority of his visits had been military.
Which brings us to this year's address. What can we expect?
I'd suggest there will be a restatement of North Korea's military and nuclear force. Despite all the talk of peace, this should neither surprise nor alarm observers. The military occupies a massive role in North Korea and so warrants an address. Restatement of North Korea's nuclear capability is also a useful reminder to the world of what's at stake.
But the economy will probably dominate again. How it does so will be crucial, though.
Kim will doubtless extol the virtues of self-reliance in industry and innovation. But he may mention specific market-based reforms.
If he does, that will be the best sign yet that he sees himself as an economic reformer in the mould of former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping, who also learned from Singapore to open up China 40 years ago.
And if that does prove the case, it means real concessions might be possible in the North's nuclear programme. A second summit between President Donald Trump and Kim, which Trump has suggested will happen in January or February, will then have something to work with.
North Korea's diplomacy with the US is also guaranteed a mention - something that simply didn't exist the year before.

Kim is unlikely to attack Trump directly. Every strongly-worded statement from North Korea has condemned opposition politicians, the media, even people in Trump's administration, but never the man himself.
And as Trump also says, Kim will likely declare that he remains in no hurry to make a real deal happen.

Kim's address is unlikely to have the whole family sat in front of the TV set. But it will give us a very good idea of what to expect in 2019.

Thanks for reading: Asian:Kim New Year speech targets the future, Sorry, my English is bad:)