North Korea to hold key parliamentary meeting on October 7 to revise its constitution

Seoul, September 16 (IANS): North Korea will hold a key parliamentary meeting next month to mainly amend the country’s constitution, state media reported Monday, after its leader Kim Jong-un called for a constitutional revision to define South Korea as its main enemy.

The 11th session of the 14th Supreme People’s Assembly (SPA) will convene in Pyongyang on October 7, according to the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).

At a SPA meeting in January, the North Korean leader called for revising the constitution to define South Korea as its “unchanging principal enemy” and codify a pledge to “completely occupy” South Korean territory in the event of war, Yonhap news agency reported.

Kim ordered the constitutional amendment to be revised to remove unification-related clauses and to define new territorial boundaries for the country, including the maritime border.

At a year-end party meeting in December, he defined inter-Korean relations as relations between “two states hostile to each other.” He vowed not to view the South as an interlocutor for reconciliation and unification.

South Korea’s Unification Ministry earlier said North Korea could abandon a basic inter-Korean agreement signed in 1991 at its next SPA meeting.

Under the 1991 agreement, inter-Korean ties were characterized as “special relations,” provisionally established as part of the reunification process, rather than state-to-state relations.

The KCNA said that in addition to the issue of amending and supplementing the country’s socialist constitution, North Korea would discuss the issue of deliberating and adopting laws on light industry and foreign economic affairs and supervising the implementation of the quality control law.

The SPA is the highest organ of state power according to the North’s constitution, but in reality it only approves the decisions of the ruling Workers’ Party.

Meanwhile, North Korea is expected to hold elections soon to choose new SPA deputies, as it announced its decision to convene a parliamentary meeting next month.

North Korea elected the 14th Supreme People’s Assembly in March 2019 for a five-year term. It was supposed to elect new members in March. However, the regime has not even released a timetable for the election of new members of the Supreme People’s Assembly.

North Korea appears to have postponed the election while it works on reviewing constitutional amendments, as ordered by its leader Kim, experts say.