Kim Jong-un becomes 'formal' head of state with more power than ever

Members of North Korea's Supreme People's Assembly (SPA) attend the Second Session of 14th SPA at Mansudae Assembly Hall in Pyongyang, Thursday, the country's state-run Korean Central News Agency reported (KCNA) the same day. KCNA-Yonhap

By Jung Da-min

North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un has become a “formal” head of state, with better-cemented legal grounds through recent amendments and supplements of the country’s Socialist Constitution, North Korea watchers said Friday.

An announcement on some changes in legal status and duty of the chairman of the State Affairs Commission (SAC), the position taken by the country’s actual leader Kim Jong-un, came a day before at the Second Session of the 14th Supreme People’s Assembly (SPA). While the SAC is Pyongyang’s supreme leadership institution, the SPA is a rubber-stamp parliament.

Kim Jong-un did not attend the Thursday SPA session and Choe Ryong Hae, a member of SPA and also the president of SPA Presidium presided it, according to a report by the country’s state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) the same day.

“Referring to the legal status and authority of the chairman of the State Affairs Commission (SAC) of the DPRK, [Choe Ryong-hae] said … the SAC chairman is not elected as deputy to SPA was added to the constitution,” the report said. Choe was referring to modifications made in the country’s Socialist Constitution’s Chapter six “State Machinery,” which states on the authority of the state organs.

“Noting that a new paragraph concerning the duty and authority of the SAC chairman has been supplemented, [Choe Ryong-hae] said the paragraph stipulates that the SAC chairman is authorized to promulgate SPA ordinances and major SAC decrees and decisions and to appoint or recall diplomatic envoys to foreign countries.”

That the SAC Chairman Kim Jong-un is no longer elected as a member of the SPA is natural, as the SAC is upper in the power hierarchy than the SPA, Kim Dong-yub, a professor at Kyungnam University's Far East Institute said.

“It seems that North Korean leadership has found it ‘abnormal’ that the SAC chairman, when he is already elected by the SPA which represents the whole North Korean people’s will, is again getting elected as a member of the SPA,” the professor said.

“But this does not mean the separation between administrative power and legislative. Seeing (the KCNA report) that ‘the SAC chairman is authorized to promulgate SPA ordinances and major SAC decrees and decisions,’ it would be more precise to say that (Kim) is the SAC chairman who reigns over the administrative and legislative powers.”

He also said that Kim Jong-un is likely to expand his diplomatic activities with the new right to appoint ambassadors that used to belong to the SPA Presidium.

But he said the North’s announcement on the amendments of its constitution is not “new” seeing its earlier report on the First Session of the 14th SPA in April, where they had already been mentioned, though without detailed explanations.

Kim’s absence could be understood in this sense too, North Korea watchers said, as he usually do not appear on a SPA session when it only announces some minor administrative or legislative policies. Out of the 11 SPA sessions, Kim attended seven of them, including in April.

Although there was no direct message toward the United States ahead of the working-level denuclearization negotiations, this week’s SPA session showed North Korea’s “firm will” that it would seek its own way by strengthening the ruling power and not to surrender to the U.S. side, the professor Kim said.