North Korea News Podcast by NK News - Borders, nukes and welfare: Inside North Korea’s purported constitution

Episode Date: May 12, 2026

This week’s NK News Podcast looks at a newly revealed document that appears to show how North Korea amended its constitution to redefine relations with South Korea. Korea Risk Group Executive Director Jeongmin Kim discusses the document’s apparent removal of unification language, its new territorial clause and why Pyongyang may be keeping maritime boundaries deliberately […]

Hello, listeners, I'm Alana Hill here in our studio in Seoul, recording today's episode of the NK News podcast on Monday, May 11th. My first official week is host. I'll admit, I was hoping for something a little bit sexier than constitutional amendments to kick things off. Come on, it's pretty sexy. Well, I was going to say it's North Korea. So even constitutional language can come with territorial claims. We've got nuclear command authority. And of course, we've got this major break from decades of unification policy. Thankfully, I'm not. I'm not. I'm not a new legal authority. I'm not. We've got this major break from decades of unification policy. Thankfully, thankfully, I'm I'm joined today by someone who can make this topic very compelling. And sexy. And sexy. Ms. Jongwin Kim, careerist group director and one of the sharpest North Korean watchers out there, if I do say so myself.

Oh, thank you very much. Zhang Wen and I will be breaking down this newly revealed document, which appears to define South Korea as a separate country bordering the DPRK to the South. It also removes references to inter-Korean unification, cuts back mentions of Kim Il-sung, and it adds language that could allow Kim Jong-un to delegate. nuclear command authority in an emergency. One really important caveat,

NK News could not independently verify the authenticity of the document and South Korea's unification ministry has not confirmed whether it's legitimate. We're going to get into all of that later. But with that out of the way, let's dive right in. First, Sue Jong-win,

thank you so much for joining me today. I joked last week about how disappointed I was that this was maybe not so attention-grabbing news and was going to be on my first topic and you told me, there's nothing sexier than Conceuth. Amendment. So clearly you're the perfect person to be joining me today. And thank you. We have already said the word sexy five times and it's only been a minute. So I think I guess this is a new era.

Well, let's start with the headline change, of course. Kim Jong-man signaled this shift in early 2024 when he first called for North Korea to redefine his relationship with the South. Now, this document gives us a look at how that may have been written into the Constitution. German, what studied out to you the most? Well, to caveat first, I have seen so many bad hit. I'm going to start with the rant first. I have seen so many bad headlines internationally and in South Korean media as well, North Korea amends the Constitution.

That's not true. North Korea really amended it a few months back, but this is the first time that we are seeing a purported document that lays out what exact language it might have been. And so the top line things that stand out to me, are basically the ones that we were already waiting for. I think the unification language, it did get a lot of, like lack of language, I should say, it did get a lot of headline, but I don't think that's new because North Korea had set

them 100,000 times so far, please let's not, you know, remain compatriots. We are separate countries, hostile to states, so on and so forth in the past over a year, which E. Jeming administration was not really taking a hint. that is reflected. Like you said, there's been so many hints, right? There were so many hints directly from Kim Jong-un or Kim Jojong, the sister. And the constitutional language shows it because they have removed Jo-Kog, Dongy, fatherland, unification,

and the three principles that the Kim Il-Sung Generation government sort of laid out. At the time, it's all removed from the preamble and the politics chapter as well. But that wasn't the top line for me. The top line was the constitution. implications of it, which was a territorial clause that you mentioned, we have been waiting for this forever because Kim Jong-in himself in a speech mentioned a while back that now North Korea will consider all border, land, air, and sea, especially sea, to be national border facing a foreign state territory. But interestingly, it did not really detail anything like NLL or coordinates or whatever.

The Northern Limit Line. Northern Limit Line. So that was interesting that they kept it vague. But still, it's the first time that North Korea officially has a territorial clause in the Constitution. And what it says is the national border to the north is the one that's facing China and Russia and to the south facing the southern territory. They also removed references to calling South Korea something like special relations sort of wording. the north-south southern people, you know, they stopped referencing like that. They also created a new country name clause, which wasn't there before due to historical

philosophical reasons about unification. For the first time, they are saying their national country name is the DPRK, which has been another conversation that was going on in South Korea. Anyways, the territorial clause basically mentions that these are the borders and we will not allow any infringement, but they don't go over that. I saw that there were a lot of analysts, including the South Korean government officials interpreting this as, you know, it's not as hostile as we thought. Maybe they are dialing down on hostility, which I very much disagree with a take. And I will dive into that more with you in a little bit. But I do actually want to ask you a little bit more

about this territorial dispute. Again, when it comes to reunification, I don't think that came as a surprise to anyone. We've been seeing North Korea talk about this since. you know, January 2024. But these shift now in how North Korea is describing its territory. Yeah, it sounds a bit dry on paper, but these words do carry a lot of weight. From an analytical standpoint, what do you think that Pyongyang is trying to do here with these new claims? I think part of the deal is they're trying to make the South Korean government, whichever government, be in a very tough position, very awkward position, because this territorial clause in the Constitution, which is the highest legal language that a country can have

makes the South Korean Constitution look anachronistic because the South Korean Constitution still aims at the unification of the fatherland. They don't say fatherland, but the peninsula. And they do not really define territory like North Korea does right now. South Koreans claim that the entirety of the peninsula is South Koreans.

Koreans are okay. So that sort of new territorial clause in North Korean constitution and now make South Koreans look like they are claiming something that North Koreans are really not having, you know, don't really want to have a conversation at all anymore. And when it comes to the Northern Limit Line, you know, this document draws a harder line between North and South,

as we've just discussed, but it doesn't actually clearly define the maritime border. Do you think that that kind of vagueness is accidental, or is this Pyongyang kind of leaving some room to maneuver, per se? I think the latter, for sure. the exact text, the language, purported language, is that the territory includes the territorial air, airspace, and the sea that is extended from the land border. That opens up a whole new kind of warms, like what this exactly means, because at current NLL, the DMZ, it's decades old. And it has always been controversial from North

Korean perspective because it's drawn during or after the, you know, during the armistice. And so this, the reason why they keep it vague probably is because if they keep it too detailed into the constitution that NLL is the national, you know, naval maritime border, then it opens up a obligation to try to protect it exactly the way that they stated in there, right? And it brings up the obligation for the, let's say, the North Korean Navy to maybe forward deploy in order to protect that. Which Kim Jong-un sort of alluded to before, but it gives North Korea some space to see how South Korea reacts. If they forward-deploy theirs first, which I don't think they will. And also, by the way, the comprehensive military agreement, it's still sort of South Korea and still sort of want to resume it, right?

So I think it gives some breathing space for South Korean government to sort of buy time a little bit. But yes, it's definitely intentional to keep it fake. Jungwin, another striking part of what we're learning is what happens to the Kim family legacy. So references to Kim Il-Zong-il, they appear to be trimmed back while Kim Jong-un is described as the head of state. What does this tell us about how Kim Jong-Gun is reshaping the system around himself? I think it's two things. One is overall, now that you mentioned, the head of state issue, it used to be Chekodong Joja, which is supreme leader, which international headlines usually referred to, used to refer to North Korea and Iran, right? But that's very axis of evilly sort of language

internationally. And so it seems like the first part of it is Kim Jong-un has been wanting to make North Korea look like, or DPRK or Joseon, wanting to look like a, Right. And so by removing Chaguryong Doza, the Supreme Leader, they will still refer to him like that, but in the Constitution removing and also making it pretty clear that it's a very normal

state-looking Constitution without less about ideology of late Kim leaders, but a constitutional legal text that is sort of akin to other countries like China as well. Normal state appearance. I think it's a first goal. But

second part, I think you already mentioned it a little bit, but if we look at the nuclear part, nuclear command part, where it allows a delegation to someone else that leads a state organ that commands a nuclear forces, that's also kept vague, which is not new, by the way, because it was already updated in the nuclear doctrine in 2022. And other parts like the Kukhagegu, the state organ chapter, North Korea used to have this double feature, a head-of-state sort of the system where North Korean leader leads most of the things, but technically there is a head of the Supreme People's Assembly that sort of handles the accredition of the ambassadors that come to North Korean and so on and so forth. They sort of try to streamline

that overall alongside removing Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il language. That sort of removes what look like an anomaly if you want to look at a normal state. And also the command feature that you mentioned as well, if we look at it, most of the, you know, Kim Jong-il-Kimil-Kimil-Sung language is gone, but it's mostly about their achievements. I think this is also a part of their effort to make the Constitution look more constitutional, removing historical achievement. But there are still Kim Jong-il-Kimil-Kimil-Irisseng-Zewi, the ideology, Kim Jong-il-Kimil-Sung-Isum is still there, which to me, sounds like it's not completely eliminating the historical root of the country. But it does look like overall they want to make constitution look like an actual constitution. It's a really interesting point and I think that it's something that's often one of the biggest misconceptions

about North Korea is this idea that it's so closed off and it's this hermit kingdom and it doesn't want anything to do with the outside world. In recent years, you know, we've heard a lot of experts and analysts in this field say that's not actually the case and Kim Jong-un is aiming to project this sense of normancy, like we saw when he went to Beijing and stood next to Xi Jinping and stood next to Putin and kind of, in my mind, was trying to project, I'm one of these guys. I'm a world leader too. Although they are not exactly the most normal leaders in the world, but good try. Some might argue that these days, right? They would argue, North Koreans would argue that. But still, removing Kim Jong-il and Kim Il-sung, it is the continuation of the end of an era, I think, overall, because their names were already

deleted from the party regulation in a similar manner. So I wouldn't say this is completely new, but it's part of a broader strengthening of the Kim Jong-un personality called me. We have looked at his new portraits and statues as well recently. Right. And his new pins. And it's part of a broader move that we have already seen, but they are standardizing basically through the constitutional text. Now, you did touch a little bit on this nuclear section of the constitution. Let's talk about that a bit more because this, I mean, could be one of the most consequential parts of the document. North Korea already had a nuclear law that emphasizing Kim's control. So tell us what exactly is new here. It's actually not new, I would say. Although it's a constitutional language, so it's the highest

order. So I guess that's significant. But the nuclear doctrine and party regulation had already sort of alluded to before or made it explicit before that if Kim Jong-un is incapacitated, someone else would be able to be delegated of the ability to push the button, basically. That's a command and control issue, and they have experienced this dilemma for decades. Because it's a country, hereditary dictatorship run by one leader, what happens if this primary target of the adversaries is actually incapacist? And so I think this is also part of a broader mood. Kim Jong-un has been building the system, the C-2 system within North Korea by hiring military folks to the right position so far in the

past few years. And also, I don't think, I saw a lot of headlines thinking, implying that the daughter whose name is known as Kim Ju-e might be the person who gets delegate. I don't think that's true. Right. I don't think we can read it like that. But perhaps if we see. see her being involved with more in-person inspections of this said organ in the Constitution, maybe in the future. But basically, it's not new, but it's new that the highest level language would confirm that there would be a delegation process. And to military folks, what this means is North Korea will have a not only first strike but second strike capability. Like, even if they are hit, their nuclear arsenal, there are still a lot of.

of areas that is still hidden, it's unknown. It's not like Iran, like Victor Cha of CSIS mentioned in his groundbreaking story analysis earlier this month. And so I think this Constitution confirms that even if you target our leader, we will still be able to survive and hit back with the new arsenal that we have. I think that is the language that the new constitutional language is trying to sort of project. And of course, this all comes in the broader context of what we saw happen in Venezuela when the U.S. captured the Venezuelan leader. It comes in the context of, as you just mentioned, Iran, those strikes in Iran killing its supreme leader. Hypothetically, could we be saying that North Korea is looking at what's happening in these other countries

and perhaps preparing for a scenario where someone else could give the order if Kim is unreachable? Is that what he's kind of looking at and preparing for? I'm sure that they are looking very closely to what happened recently, but I still think that the general move to create the delegation system, it's, I think, at least three years old. Okay. Interesting. Johnwin, there's also a reference to overseas military operations. That was very interesting. Yeah. I mean, of course, obviously immediately raises the Russia connection. Is this Pyongyang writing in its troop deployment to Russia into the country's official legal framework? Can we say that? Is that step too far? A little bit too because I think they do not include language related to what they will do in the future.

I think it is basically honoring who's already gone to Kursk, but without saying Russia or Kursk. So just before we go further, Jim, we remind our listeners what is actually written there. There are multiple chapters in the Constitution that handle, you know, politics, defense, and state organs and econ, society and culture and so on and so forth. And chapter five is about rights and obligations of the North Korean people. And one of the clauses used to be how the state should, how the state should protect and honor and help the war veterans, basically. But in a more historical looking back sort of manner, like those who fought on the Korean were the families of the people who are revolutionary heroes, basically.

But then I think the Constitution basically reflects that there are new age. war veterans and heroes that they have to reflect in the Constitution. And they basically mentioned those who were stationed abroad for military operations, those families of the brief families shall be protected by the state and the society. I think it's referring basically to the apartments, apartments that were given in Scep Bear Street to the families of the deceased. And also they mentioned they included more categories into the rights and obligations, part basically, it's basically just part of it.

Before we go any further, I do want to come back to this caveat that I mentioned at the beginning. This document has not been officially verified. So how should we be reading it? Is this a smoking gun? Is it a strong clue? Or is it something that we should, you know, be kind of taking with a pinch of salt and handling a bit more carefully? One, yes, pinch of salt. Because let me just explain how this breaking news became breaking news at the time when it's not breaking news because it was amended before. So what happened was we started seeing Yanhab urgence and stuff at 2 p.m. exactly,

which usually means it was embargoed. The siding unification ministry, but then there was something off about it when we looked into it. Dr. Li Zhengchar, who was very well-sourced and very well-informed, by the way, and so at Seoul National University, the MOU was hosting a seminar for the MOU press corps folks

about this document that he personally obtained. Okay. So when I reached out to MOU, basically they were saying they do not represent the document. They were just, you know, providing the venue for him, the academic,

to release whatever information that he found to them. So we still don't know what the source was. He wouldn't disclose it. But then the reason why we decided to cover it is because there are a lot of signs that the South Korean government believes this is a true document, including how the NIS, the South Korean spy agency, did a whole debrief for the National Assembly's Intelligence Committee, which they had some sort of interpretation,

how this is less hostile, but that's another story. It's a grain of salt, but it does look like it is highly probable that it's interesting. But the second part of it is this a smoking gun to something really big? I think no. Although I framed it as super sexy, it is sexy because we have been waiting for the territorial cost forever. And this does show that North Korea did do it. And although it's not irreversible or anything because they can amend it back, it still shows that they are pretty settled on drawing the border and living separately from South Korea.

So not a super smoking gun, but it's still a major document that, I think it's a very highly probable that it's right. Right. Speaking of sexy, let's speak about souls not so sexy response to this. It's been pretty measured. The Blue House says it will stick with its peaceful coexistence policy, while the defense ministry says readiness remains unchanged. Is South Korea trying to avoid overreacting here,

or is it underplaying, you know, I know we've clarified that this is likely not a major shift, but something may be more serious. I think, gritty aspect of it, it is a big deal for South Korean government that they confirm that there is a territorial clause. Broader perspective, it's, it's always already been happening and we knew that this was coming, but from South Korean government perspective that they have to look at their own constitution, which of the amendment already did not really pass last week for different reasons.

This is a big deal to them because North Korea made it into a constitution that they won't really seek unification anymore. They knew what was coming, but it was. was nailed the coffin, right? But I don't think they were not overreactually, I think they were overreacting to a certain extent because they were giving a very, very wishful thinking to read into what was in the Constitution and not in the Constitution.

The NIS take to the lawmakers at the Intelligence Committee a day after document was released was said, hey, look, it does not include the word hostile in the constitutional. amendment. It is not really mentioning South Korea as a hostile state. It is not really going into the realm of being aggressive about what to do with communist-based unification on the peninsula. So it must be intended to dial down on the tension and not hostile. I don't think that's true. Constitution in any countries, it's very unlikely that any country will include the word

hostile state into a constitution. They might include that into nuclear doctrine into party regulation, whatever. Constitution did not use to have that. It did have references to unification before, which they removed. So they are right in that it's keeping it vague with the border so that they have bandwidth for the future.

That I agree with. But I don't think that not including the word hostile into the Constitution means that they are dialing down on hostility because, guess what built into actually amending the constitution was a hostile to state's policy that led to the amendment. So no, I disagree with NIS conclusion that this was meant for keeping space for future engagement. And that's one thing that I just quickly want to clarify before I let you go, Jungman. A lot of this assessment is based on the fact that, like you said, the word hostile is not being used in the constitution.

But as you just said, it wasn't being used before, right? So there were some aspects in the Constitution, the past versions that people could read into. They wouldn't say hostile directly, but there used to be forward-looking goals related to achieving the unification on their own right, like whatever principles that they held on to, which, by the way, did not include hostile either. So that's not new. And we shouldn't really read too much into it. Well, Jumman Kim, thank you so much for joining us, helping us break down what's new, what's not new and what might be to come. Listeners, don't go anywhere because next up, we're going to stay with this document, but shift the focus from North Korea's external posture to what it might say about life inside the country. Thanks so much, Jungman.

So we've gotten a sense of how these constitutional changes could reshape North Korea's relationship with the South. But the document also changes inside North Korea, especially in how the state defines its response. responsibilities to citizens and manages the economy. So to unpack that side of the story, I'm joined now by Peter Ward. Peter is a research fellow at the Sejong Institute, a regular contributor to NKPro, my rumoured, long-lost cousin. Thank you for joining me today, Peter. Great to be here. So, Peter, your article looks at a different side of North Korea's constitutional revisions. It's the state's relationship with its own citizens. What stood out to you the most in the economic and welfare changes?

I mean, I would say just the level of bluntness of the document with regard to state provision. And I don't know, it's from the point of view of the North Korean people, it might seem almost a bit brazen just how much, how large the changes they were prepared to put into the constitution regarding welfare. I mean, when I was looking on YouTube, I saw some people who are very, you know, sort of very pro-regime, very pro-northcreen regime, making comments about NK News, peddling disinformation. It's, you know, there will be supporters of the North Korean regime outside of the country who are very skeptical that these changes have actually even happened.

North Korea has long claimed to provide jobs, housing, food, free health care. Are we saying that, you know, these revisions basically, is Pyongyang admitting that those promises no longer match reality? Yes. Yes, I think that's exactly what we're saying. So that plus them seeking maybe to renegotiate the existing terms of the social contract between them and their people. So previously, the North Korean government pledged in the Constitution to provide food, housing, and clothing to all citizens. It no longer does that. Previously, it pledged to build housing for rural residents at the state's expense. It no longer does that. Previously, it pledged to provide healthcare free of charge to all residents. It no longer does that. And these are very large changes.

There are also some discursive changes or changes in the way that they describe themselves, which are, to me, they're, I mean, maybe I shouldn't be so flippant, but they seem a bit comical to me. So in the previous constitution, they talked about the workers of North Korea as being free or liberated from exploitation and pressure. And that expression, liberation from exploitation and pressure has been removed from the Constitution, which I don't think it means that the North Korean government is now committed to exploiting and pressurizing its people, although many would argue that's exactly what they do. But the fact they removed the expression is quite remarkable and, I don't know, a little bit bizarre from where I'm sitting. It seems unnecessary to remove such a thing.

It could easily be used against them in propaganda. Why do it? Peter, as you've just mentioned, these references to food and clothing and housing provision, they've all been removed. can we say that the state is in a way formally lowering its expectations for what it owes its citizens? Yes, partially, and then it's also probably partially adjusting who it thinks should foot these burdens, not necessarily always the North Korean residents directly, but potentially North Korean local governments, regional governments, or state enterprises or cooperative farms. I think they're not called cooperative farms anymore, usually, but colloquial, I'm sure they still are,

but yeah, the state farms. So it doesn't necessarily mean that they're not. constitutionally requiring that the North Korean people just take care of their own welfare. But what it is instead is it's the central government no longer imposing constitutionally these burdens upon itself. Well, speaking of footing the bill, another thing that we've seen removed is language relating to North Caribbean tax-free. Given that people already pay various fees and contributions in practice, tell us why that change is significant. So it was either 19, I think it was

In the first 1976 when North Korea officially abolished all taxes on individuals, and this was part of a major propaganda campaign about the socialist system and North Korea being superior to the South Korean capitalist system and then, you know, capitalist countries and most other countries generally were the only, the first country that's ever abolished taxation was that was the line. The idea that they got rid of this from the Constitution, yet again, in reality, North Koreans face a lot of in-kind and cash-related fees and taxes. you know, most North Koreans are mobilized from the city to the countryside if they don't live in the countryside to help with planting and to help with the harvest. Younger North Koreans are often mobilized to construction sites. So North Koreans who, so married women and old people who are not officially required to attend state workplaces are often also mobilized to conduct labor to do various labor activities, you know, whether it's building infrastructure, it's, you know, contributing by a gathering together scrap metal or, you know, gathering. night soil. You know, we have knights oil quotas again. Those are a tax in kind. You know, we don't usually think of having to give our feces to the government as a tax that anyone would usually pay. But in North Korea, that is very much the case. So it's not like it's a country where there

are no burdens placed upon the citizenry by the government, but this was an important part of their, shall we say, external propaganda. And they've removed it from the Constitution. Another thing, they've removed the Constitution, which is pretty funny as well, as they remove the expression, our workers who know nothing of or do not know of, and unemployment. You know, so this is a country without, you know, declare, its declaration, its declaration in the constitution is they don't have unemployment and they remove that from the constitution. I mean, you know, if I'm going to explain what they're doing here, I would say that partially it's about normalizing the social contract as embedded within, you know, a foundational document, the most

important, you know, from from the government's point of view, the most important document, that the most important law that the states seeks to uphold. But another thing they're probably doing here is removing ideological garnish from the document. So there's a lot of stuff. You know, I don't think they're now admitting that there's lots of unemployment in the country. I think they do kind of now admit that there is some unemployment in the country or there's something like people who should have jobs who do not and who should be working for state-owned enterprises or other state entities who are not. They have been mentioned in speeches by Kim Jong-un. So there is an element of recognizing that reality, maybe. But I also think they're just removing ideological garnish from

the document. So you don't need these expressions like, in the middle of defining what, you know, what labor is, you don't necessarily need to then assert in the middle of the relevant article of the Constitution that we don't have exploitation and that we don't know. You know, our people do not know of unemployment. You can just remove it. It's not necessary. It does look weird, but, you know, the process of removing it looks a bit bizarre,

but, you know, you're just removing stuff that is not necessary, not necessary for defining the roles, the rights, the authorities, and the responsibilities of the state. I want to ask you about one more removal that we've seen, and that is the language on comprehensive free health care. That's also disappeared. What does this tell us about where North Korea's welfare system is heading? Yeah, so Kim Jong-in, I think was last year, and one of his speeches talked about the need to introduce an insurance fund system. I think that was the expression he used.

And at the time, you know, some analysts noted it and thought it was interesting, but we didn't get much in the way of follow-up initially. And then late last year, another publication whose name I hope I'm allowed to mention, Adelian K, reported on the, the introduction of an insurance scheme. Daily NK sources have also recently acquired pictures of North Korea and health insurance cards, which appear to be quite genuine. So the introduction of the health insurance scheme, I think, is designed to try and plug a hole in the funding for their massive hospital and general sort of healthcare infrastructure buildout. They do already have fees for many prescription drugs. They already had a system of fees for some healthcare provision. These fees were not publicised to the outside world, but I've seen them. The fee structure

was some outsiders were able to see evidence of the existence of this fee structure. And it was quite clear that the system already had elements of fee paying and non-free provision. And now they're trying to sort of normalize that through the creation of a hypothesated fee or tax for healthcare services in order for them to, yes, expand healthcare provision. At least that's how it interpret what we're saying here. I don't think it's going to be enough to fund the number of hospitals, the amount of equipment and, you know, the staffing requirements that they have for this buildout, you know, we're talking about, they're talking about building hospitals in every county in the country, you know, 200 hospitals or 200 healthcare facilities, potentially quite large. They have a lot of

doctors who need to upgrade their skills. They're going to need to equip all of these hospitals. This is going to be very expensive. And if they are, say, deducting, if they're taking 10% out of the pay packet of every North Korean worker, we're not probably talking about enough money to finance this. But nonetheless, it probably will help to some extent to pay for some of the costs associated with maintaining this upgraded health system. And there'll probably be a combination of, because they already have a fee structure for some healthcare, there'll probably be a combination of insurance payments plus payment pay by procedure or pay by visit to the hospital or something like that. I mean, I think ideologically, this is quite difficult to justify. I think building such a system, it may not work very well.

It may get the hang of it. They may be able to improve provision considerably. They may not be able to. The major issue I think they really face is not so much the technical aspects of the system. It's more the ideological justification for what they're doing, which for me I haven't really seen much in the way of explanation yet. And maybe Kim Jong-un thinks he can just sort of impose this from above and people will just accept it, maybe.

But to me, yet again, it's ideologically pretty suspect. So it's quite an interesting development. We've covered now basically all the things that we've seen taken out. of the Constitution, but ultimately the state is still really doubling down on control of the economy. Peter, for our listeners, can you briefly tell us what we've seen in this new document in relation to that kind of control? And how much room does this revised Constitution actually leave for kind of private or non-state activity, which we do know takes place? Yeah, so, I mean, the North Korean government prized itself on controlling all of the productive assets of the economy pretty much,

except for what people can do in their homes. The Constitution asserts that with a little bit more vigor than it did before. They included a new phrase in the article related to state ownership. But, you know, it's basically the same. With respect to regional development, which is like a sort of major economic priority of the North Korean government right now. So in late 2023, Kim Jong-un started the 20 by 10 regional development policy, which was this idea.

I mean, it's the hospital build out. It's part of that actually now as well, of course. But it was this idea that every county, in the country should have an industrial facility to produce, you know, things like daily necessities and the like for its residents. And so they're building 20 of these facilities, they're building 20 of these facilities in 20 counties a year for 10 years. So 200 counties, districts and cities are over 10 years and 20 per year. And this is, you know, this is a central government-led project, but there is obviously an expectation that some of the funding will come from below.

and then the ongoing costs of maintenance and production will be handled from below. The central government's not going to run all these facilities on an ongoing basis and finance all of them. But that is a major campaign directed from above. That is not about working with market actors and using market incentives. It's about state-directed development. And it seems to be quite old-fashioned state-directed development. So, you know, there's not like a public-private buy-in or anything like that. Having said, and, you know, they continue to have these sort of campaigns against private economic activity.

But I would imagine that a lot of these regional development hubs or industrial, industrial hubs, if they are going to work, they'll eventually become quite marketized and there will probably be private investment to keep them going. But we're not seeing much in the way that the government being particularly open to that idea. It's just my speculation that that will eventually be the case. So that's certainly not a, in a short run, that's clearly not a pro-market development, a pro-reform development. In one other area, though, we see when they talk about what's called personal property, so this is property that is not state owned, it's owned by individuals, right? So individual or personal property.

They still define personal property as just something that's held by individuals and is for consumption, not production. So you can own a toothbrush, you can own a carpet, you know, things for your own personal consumption, you can own. But, you know, recently in the last five years, North Korea has, well, last 10 years, North Korea is legal. the trade in and ownership of cows or oxen. And oxen are a key source of muscle power for farmers. So that is, you know, it's basically a capital good by any other name. So farmers are now able to own some more capital goods. And individuals in cities, and I would imagine, from what I know, in the countryside as well, are potentially, if they can afford it, own cars as well. So that's a major development in a direction that allows for more individual autonomy and potentially

it's quite a positive development. And then the language surrounding individual property has become more vague. So initially it was sort of writ the language in the previous constitution talked about, you know, kitchen plots and individual sidework activities, you know, starting with kitchen plots. So kind of rural, kind of small scale. And now they're just talking about income that is, you know, legally acquired by individuals is, you know, is covered under the idea of individual property. So potentially it just, it creates more vagueness around what individual property is and allows the government potentially to expand that in a more sort of a set, you know, to a broader extent if they wish to.

Now, Peter, I know you're a busy man, but before I let you go, I do want to ask you one more question because from reading your analysis and also from our conversation today, the thing that stands out to me is probably the most interesting is the fact that a lot of this revised language or removed language, it kind of reflects this less ideological and more realistic take or stance per se. Do you think that Kim Jong-un is ultimately trying to make the Constitution reflect how North Korea actually works rather than how it claims to work? And for ordinary North Koreans, would these changes really matter in their daily lives? I think yes. I think there is some effort to some extent to reflect the realities on the ground, but not fully. So

private, de facto private ownership and control are very important parts of many industries, in North Korea, and the North Korean government under Kim Jong-un is not willing to accept that. And they still have these ongoing campaigns against that. Markets are very important in the allocation of lots of different goods and services, and the government has episodic campaigns to try and eliminate or limit the power of market traders. But yeah, when it comes to what the government is prepared to give and provide its people, you could say the document is much more realistic than it was, you know, the last constitution was. So at least in that area, but I mean, it's more them sort of refurb.

or scaling back the extent of their declaratory obligations. They don't actually, you know, they don't necessarily fully comply with their, you know, they don't necessarily fully discharge their obligations already. And they're now scaling those back to more realistically codify what they're actually able to do. But, you know, this is not the same as, say, necessarily reforming, reforming in a direction that's positive for the autonomy of the North Korean people. I think, you know, there are some sort of, uh, that part of the document can be read in such a way, but not really very much.

Well, I am going to leave that fantastic analysis that you wrote in our show notes for listeners to check out. And Peter, thanks so much for joining me today. Pleasure. Anytime. And that brings us to the end of today's episode. Our thanks to Brian Betts and David Choi for helping make this podcast happen. For more reporting, analysis and expert insight on North Korea, visit NK News for the latest stories and NKPro for deeper analysis. data and research tools. You can also watch this episode on YouTube and be sure to follow us on

social media for the latest updates, clips and behind the scenes content. I'm Alana Hill. Thank you for listening and we'll be back next time with more on the stories shaping North Korea.