North Korean chief Kim Jong Un attends the primary session of the Supreme Folks’s Meeting, the place state media experiences he’s reappointed as president of state affairs, in Pyongyang, North Korea, March 22, 2026, on this image launched by North Korea’s official Korean Central Information Company. Photograph: KCNA by way of Reuters
North Korea’s rubber-stamp legislature has re-elected Kim Jong Un as President of State Affairs, state media reported on Monday.
Mr. Kim’s reappointment as head of the authoritarian nation’s highest policymaking and governing physique, the State Affairs Fee, was introduced by the state information company KCNA.
Critics argue that elections in North Korea are pre-determined and designed to offer the nation’s management a veneer of democratic legitimacy.
“The Supreme Folks’s Meeting of the DPRK reelected Comrade Kim Jong Un as President of the State Affairs of the Democratic Folks’s Republic of Korea on the First Session, the primary state affairs exercise of its fifteenth time period, on March 22,” KCNA reported.
The report mentioned the choice to re-elect Kim to the “high submit” mirrored “the unanimous will and want of all of the Korean individuals”.
Mr. Kim is the third-generation ruler of the nuclear-armed state based by his grandfather Kim Il Sung in 1948. He has dominated the nation since his father’s demise in 2011.
The election is a “extremely choreographed occasion with a pre-determined consequence”, mentioned Lee Ho?ryung of the Korea Institute for Protection Analyses.
“All through the third-generation rule, the North has staged such occasions to showcase a process in an try to attain political legitimacy,” she mentioned.
“However nobody thinks any totally different consequence would emerge from it.”
Images launched by KCNA present Kim wearing a proper western go well with and seated on the centre of a stage, flanked by high officers in entrance of two big statues of his father Kim Jong Il and grandfather.
Barometer
Previous to the occasion, 687 deputies had been elected to the SPA, with North Koreans over 17 given the selection of approving or rejecting the only candidate put ahead by the ruling occasion.
The brand new deputies had been duly accepted with 99.93 % of votes in favour and 0.07% in opposition to, KCNA reported earlier, with turnout at 99.99%.
The Pyongyang meeting corridor was “stuffed with the extraordinary political consciousness and revolutionary enthusiasm” by the newly elected members, it mentioned.
Analysts say the present meeting session might also take up potential constitutional amendments that would embody formally codifying inter-Korean relations as these between “two hostile states”.
The language Mr. Kim makes use of to explain his stance in the direction of South Korea in his meeting speech will likely be a “barometer” of his inter-Korea plans, Hong Min, a senior analyst on the Korea Institute for Nationwide Unification, informed AFP.
“The extent to which phrases equivalent to ‘nationwide unification’ or ‘Korean unity’ are eliminated and changed by aggressive expressions together with ‘territorial management’ may function a barometer of his ideological framework,” he mentioned.
The important thing level lies in how far he’ll “flesh out problems with territory, territorial waters and airspace” in coping with Seoul, he added.
The gathering follows a five-yearly assembly of the ruling occasion final month.
Printed – March 23, 2026 10:46 pm IST