Pyongyang's rubber stamp parliament convenes

North Korea's rubber-stamp parliament met on Tuesday amid weeks of silence on the direction of its external relations and military policy.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un speaks at the 6th expanded plenary session of the 8th Central Committee of the Workers' Party in Pyongyang in footage broadcast by the state-controlled Korean Central Television on Dec. 29. It remains to be seen if Kim also spoke at Tuesday's gathering of the Supreme People's Assembly, the regime's rubber-stamp parliament. [YONHAP]

North Korea's rubber-stamp parliament met on Tuesday amid weeks of silence on the direction of its external relations and military policy.

The meeting was announced by state media last month.

The Supreme People’s Assembly (SPA) meets once or twice a year in Pyongyang to approve budgets, amendments to current laws and personnel appointments.

While the SPA holds no real power — its functions are usually exercised by a Standing Committee made up of 15 SPA members, and real power is concentrated in the Presidium of the ruling Workers’ Party Politburo — it is constitutionally held to be the highest organ of state power, and its laws legitimize policy decisions made by the party’s leadership.

State media reports on the SPA’s meeting said it would focus on approving this year’s budget, but the legislature could also elaborate plans to carry out nuclear weapon and missile development policies announced by leader Kim Jong-un at an expanded plenary session of the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea's Central Committee in late December.

It remained unclear if leader Kim Jong-un delivered remarks at the SPA’s meeting that would shed any light on the direction of the regime’s external relations and weapons programs.

At a Workers’ Party plenary session in December, Kim said the regime intends to develop a new intercontinental ballistic missile in 2023, which marks the 75th anniversary of the country’s founding.

He also said that the North needs to mass-produce tactical nuclear weapons and “exponentially” increase its production of nuclear warheads.

Kim has used previous SPA meetings as a platform to deliver messages aimed at the outside world, especially the United States and South Korea.

At a meeting of the legislature in 2019, just after the collapse of the U.S.-North Korea summit in Hanoi, Kim said he was willing to hold a third North Korea-U.S. summit.

At another SPA gathering in September 2021, he expressed his intention to restore inter-Korean communication lines, which Pyongyang unilaterally severed in June 2020 to protest anti-Pyongyang propaganda leaflets sent over the border by North Korean defector groups in the South.

At its last meeting in September, the SPA adopted legislation setting conditions for using nuclear weapons.

Kim gave a speech at that meeting heralding the law as a clear sign of the North’s “irreversible” status as a nuclear weapons state.

In an interview with the JoongAng Ilbo, Prof. Chung Dae-jin of Halla University in Wonju said that recent political gatherings in the North indicate a concerted effort by the regime to consolidate internal cohesion amid high tensions with the South and the United States.

“North Korea seems to be expanding workshop politics as a means of breaking through the current complicated state of crisis,” he said.

“It seems to be trying to achieve internal solidarity at the SPA meeting, in addition to executing other necessary tasks handed over by the Workers’ Party plenary session.”

BY MICHAEL LEE [lee.junhyuk@joongang.co.kr]