Is North Korea becoming less strange?

John Everad The author is a former British ambassador to North Korea. For decades, one of the most striking characteristics of North Korea, officially the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), has been its exaggerated rhetoric: utterly improbable stories about its god-king leaders and their astonishing achievements, and wildly extravagant claims of domestic well-being and prosperity. It was, it claimed, a society with nothing to envy. Ordinary DPRK citizens knew grimly that this was not true, but the regime myths, enshrined in the DPRK constitution, continued. However, the revisions to the DPRK constitution approved by the Supreme People's Assembly on March 22 and 23 took a major step toward dismantling this rhetoric. Formal changes to the country's relationship with South Korea were widely expected because North Korean leader Kim Jong-un had announced them in December 2023. Indeed, Article 9 of the former constitution, which committed the DPRK to striving for peaceful reunification, was removed so that the constitution recognizes the fact that the Korean Peninsula is divided into two states. But we can now see that this change was just one aspect of a wide-ranging effort to bring the DPRK's constitution more closely into line with reality. So, at last, the revised constitution recognizes that the DPRK's huge welfare ambitions for its people no longer bear any relation to real life. They have been quietly abandoned — the very word "socialist" has been dropped from the title of the constitution. For example, it has been a long time since the constitution's former claim that DPRK citizens "did not know unemployment" (Article 27) meant anything in practice. In fact, for many decades, many, even those with a formal job in state structures, have had to work in the DPRK's burgeoning private sector — and in particular in its free markets — in order to make ends meet. The newly revised constitution drops that claim. Similarly, the DPRK's state health care sector has long been dysfunctional. Although competent nursing is often available, medicines have long been in short supply and often unobtainable (when I traveled from Pyongyang to Beijing, my DPRK friends would always ask me to bring medicines back). Conditions for surgery are frighteningly bad. The revised constitution drops claims to provide free universal health care. Also, although the regime has long implicitly recognized the DPRK's acute housing shortage — leadership speeches often refer to the need to build more accommodations — the state remained constitutionally committed to providing housing (Articles 22 and 25). But that commitment, too, has been dropped. (On the other hand, the state's obligation to provide free education — which, by and large, it does — remains in the constitution.) More striking still are the changes to the regime's claims to legitimacy. The revised constitution deletes the previous extensive references to the almost supernatural feats of the ancestors of Kim and refers to him no longer as "supreme leader" but simply as "head of state," stating that this status derives from his position as chairman of the State Affairs Commission. Since its foundation, one of the most striking characteristics of the DPRK has been its extraordinary political mythmaking and claims to legitimacy by its leaders — not by reference to a modern political process but through heredity in the Paektu bloodline, a system more associated with traditional monarchies than modern states. The supreme leader was, in effect, a modern version of the old kings of Korea. But the term "head of state" is widely used and recognized in many modern states. The change means that the leader of the DPRK now derives their legitimacy not from their ancestry but from a formal position. This is a very significant political modernization. These changes have numerous major implications. Firstly, they have major implications for society. The immense gap between the inflated claims of the re...