Last week around the July 17 Constitution Day, I read both our Constitution and the constitution of North Korea, the latter rather more carefully. My curiosity about the basic law of the North had in fact been rising as I watched all the extraordinary developments in Pyongyang over the past few years since the death of Kim Jong-il and his son Jong-un’s succession.

Rule of law does not seem to be a foremost principle in the other half of the Korean Peninsula when we hear the shocking stories of summary executions of high-ranking officials and the gulags with hundreds of thousands of inmates. And there were the preposterous economic measures, such as a currency reform, that usually met disastrous consequences. Yet, when it comes to the business of passing the supreme leadership from one person to another, I thought there must be a constitutional process even in an autocracy that offers the new ruler a claim to legitimacy.

From shortly before the death of Kim Jong-il in December 2011, Jong-un was given several official titles that provided him with unlimited and unchallenged power in the top seats of the party, military and government. They were “first secretary” of the Workers’ Party assumed on April 11, 2012, “first chairman” of the National Defense Commission (on April 13, 2012), supreme commander of the Korean People’s Army (on Dec. 30, 2011), and chairman of the Central Military Commission (on April 11, 2012). So, I checked provisions of the North’s constitution primarily to see what procedures it has regarding such important appointments.

Our Ministry of Unification kindly offers materials on North Korea, including the full texts of its constitution and other statutes and edicts. The Constitution of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea that I picked up from the “Information Center on North Korea” site was the April 9, 2010, version of the law. There were reports that another revision was made on April 13, 2012, to add the name Kim Jong-il alongside his father Kim Il-sung’s and define the country as a nuclear power.

With what legal knowledge I had, limited to four years’ undergraduate study in a college of law, I found the North Korean constitution was peculiar to say the least. The very first sentence of its preamble struck me with shock and dismay. It read: “The DPRK is a Juche-based socialist fatherland that embodies the idea and leadership of the Great Leader Comrade Kim Il-sung.” Each and every sentence in the preamble contained the names of Kim Il-sung or Kim Jong-il and the last line solemnly designated the basic law as the “Kim Il-sung Constitution.”

One may be led to believe he were reading the epitaph at the tomb of the DPRK founder who died in 1994 after grooming his son Jong-il as his successor. The preamble emphasizes, “Comrade Kim Il-sung’s great idea and achievements in leadership are the eternal treasures of the DPRK revolution and serve as a basic guarantee for the affluence and prosperity of the DPRK.” (The English translation is taken from the Northeast Asia Matters site.) Under this kind of constitution, it is simply inconceivable that anyone other than a direct descendant of the Great Leader can rule the state that owes its existence so completely to his great leadership.

We know that the title of DPRK “president” is eternally reserved for Kim Il-sung and “chairman of the National Defense Commission” and “general secretary of the Workers’ Party” permanently dedicated to Kim Jong-il. Therefore the positions of “first chairman” of the NDC and “first secretary” of the party were created through the April 2012 constitutional amendment solely to decorate the third-generation supreme leader from the Kim family without shading the aura of his father, whose mummified body is lying in the Geumsusan Taeyang (sun) Shrine of Pyongyang.

However, any observer of North Korean affairs can easily find serious procedural flaws in installing Kim Jong-un in the top positions. Kim Jong-un was appointed as supreme commander of the People’s Army on Dec. 30, 2011, immediately after the funeral of his father. Under the constitution, top military positions should be appointed by the chairman of the National Defense Commission. But North Korean media reported that Kim Jong-un was named supreme military commander by the Political Bureau of the Workers’ Party “in accordance with the instruction of the NDC chairman before his death,” or his “yuhun.”

If they followed the constitutional procedures, the Supreme People’s Assembly or its Standing Committee should have first named new NDC chairman as the chief executive of the DPRK so he could appoint Kim Jong-un as the People’s Army supreme commander. But, in the North, the deathbed instruction of the deceased leader preceded any constitutional provisions or other statutes. In any case, the “first chairman” of the National Defense Commission, now the supreme leader of the DPRK directing both internal and external affairs, was saved from the absurdity of naming himself military chief.

The North Korean constitution with 160-odd clauses is made up of seven chapters. Chapter 5 provides the basic rights and duties of the people resembling those of normal democratic states, specifying the freedom of residence and travel as well as the civil liberties of religion, press, publication, assembly and demonstration. Yet, conspicuously missing are provisions that guarantee the right to remain silent and freedom from retroactive criminal punishment, which are common in modern democratic constitutions.

The “collectivist principle of one for all and all for one” in Article 63 sounded eerie as a faint excuse for the denial of individual rights and freedom. In all, the North’s basic law explained many bizarre happenings on the other side of the border that it defined as an independent socialist state under the guiding principles of Kim Il-sung’s “Juche” idea and Kim Jong-il’s military-first policy.

I momentarily thought of the Yushin (Revitalizing Reform) Constitution of 1972, which provided the most authoritarian system of government in the South. It was abolished long ago and we have maintained the 1987 Constitution without changing a single clause. A look at the DPRK Constitution, a.k.a. the Kim Il-sung Constitution, profoundly enhanced my gratitude to our political history, in which people’s collective conscience and passion toward justice brought us to such a great contrast with the North. 

By Kim Myong-sik

Kim Myong-sik is a former editorial writer of The Korea Herald. ―Ed.