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SEOUL - Pyongyang watchers have an enviable lot: they always have something to talk about. North Korea never stops providing fodder for the rumor mill. Even if the exact meaning of many strange and inexplicable actions will remain a mystery for decades, it's great fun in looking for interpretations. Over the past month North Korea has been especially active, and produced quite a few topics to ponder. One the most recent was a statement that the session of the Supreme People's Assembly (expected to convene on March 9) would be delayed until further notice. As usual, the Pyongyang authorities said they had just obediently followed "the requests made by deputies to the SPA in all domains of the socialist construction". They did not explain, however, why the deputies suddenly made such requests.
We still don't know. And it still hasn't met.
What is the Supreme People's Assembly? Ostensibly, it is the North Korean parliament. It is elected through popular vote even though, as we'll see, the vote is cast in a very particular, idiosyncratic way. The SPA approves the nation's laws and budget and confirms cabinet appointments. Like other "legislatures" in communist countries, it always votes unanimously, with all government proposals being approved without a single dissenting voice. It meets only twice a year, with each session lasting merely a few days, so the bills are prepared elsewhere, and voted on without any meaningful discussion. A person who is ready to waste time on reading boring and repetitive speeches of the delegates soon discovers that most speeches have nothing to do with the bills under discussion. The members usually use this opportunity to tell about the love and loyalty their constituencies allegedly feel toward the Dear Leader Kim Jong-il as well as to report the heroic feats of labor carried out in their native districts.
Do communist countries need parliaments at all? This is a good question, since of the manifold symbolic institutions of a communist state, its parliament is probably the most symbolic and most meaningless. Obviously, we are dealing with another surviving Stalinist tradition. When in 1936 the Soviet dictator Josef Stalin needed to present a facade of democracy (a necessary prerequisite for a broad anti-fascist alliance he was planning at the time), he devised a type of "rubber-stamping parliament" that would have some superficial similarities to authentic parliaments while being completely impotent as an institution. Its structure was eventually emulated across the entire communist world. All communist "legislatures" (if the word is applicable) lacked even shadow power, but few of them were so clearly symbolic as the North Korean SPA. And in a few cases the underlying lies were blatant.
The history of the SPA can be traced back to late 1946, when it was decided to hold the first elections in the North, to create a body known as the People's Assembly. Of course, the elections were to follow the Soviet prototype, based on two major principles. One of these principles is quite common in democracies: "one voter, one vote". Another one is quite peculiar: "one seat, one candidate". All candidates were pre-selected by the authorities, so the voters had a choice of either supporting a single available candidate or voting against him or her - but without the option of choosing another person.
To explain this obviously non-democratic arrangement, the communist regimes employed a fine piece of political demagogy. It was explained that the Communist Party and the "non-party masses" together formed an "electoral alliance". Since virtually everybody in the country was either a communist or a member of the "non-party masses", there were no reasons to have other candidates. If in a particular country there were other parties (as was the case in North Korea), they "joined" the communist-led alliance.
In practice, the list of candidates was approved by the party bureaucracy. A Soviet joke of the early 1980s (when this writer was in his youth) wryly captures the spirit of the system: "Is it possible to predict the results of the elections to the Supreme Soviet [state parliament] of the USSR [Union of Soviet Socialist Republics] in 2000? No. Why not? Because the Communist Party Central Committee has compiled the lists of deputies only until 1999."
How were these candidates selected? Somewhat surprisingly, we know how the mechanics worked in the case of the first North Korean "legislature", the People's Assembly that was elected in early 1947. Colonel-General Terentii Shtykov, the supreme supervisor of the Soviet-sponsored state-building in North Korea, had some unusual habits: this ruthless and brilliant self-didact scrupulously kept a diary in which he recorded major events of his political life - and he did so with remarkable frankness. This diary was eventually discovered by historians.
From Shtykov's diary we know that on December 19, 1946, Shtykov called a meeting with two other Soviet generals. The participants discussed the composition of the future North Korean legislature. It is worth mentioning that no Koreans took part in the discussions (so much for the now-popular thesis about "self-rule" allegedly promoted by the Soviets in the North - an idea increasingly powerful among South Korean left-leaning historians). The generals decided that the assembly would consist of 231 members, and distributed the seats among the parties. The ruling Korean Workers Party was given 35% of the places, the the Ch'ondogyo Party and the Democratic Party - two puppet parties already under communist control - were to receive 15% each (equality!). Thirty-five percent of the members were to have no party affiliation. It was good math: one-third to the communists, one-third to their junior partners and one-third to the "non-party masses".
In their wisdom, the generals even took care of women, whose representation was fixed at 15%. The social origin of the future deputies was also pre-determined: 40 workers, 50 peasants, 45 intellectuals, 10 traders, seven entrepreneurs, 10 priests, and 10 craftsmen (the remaining seats were probably supposed to go to the party bureaucrats). Obviously, the orders were later delivered to the nascent Korean bureaucracy to enact. We do not have documents showing how it was actually done. But the outcome of the elections speaks for itself. If we have a look at the actual composition of the 1947 People's Assembly, we can see that the above-mentioned Soviet instructions were followed with only minor deviations.
The 1947 elections had another peculiarity. There were different ballot boxes for voting "for" and "against" the pre-selected candidate (white and black respectively). Of course, officials could easily spot those who dared to approach black boxes. Avoiding participation in the elections was also dangerous: everybody understood that an absentee tried to avoid not the elections per se, but the necessity to vote for a government-selected candidate. This "black-white box" system continued until the late 1950s.
The People's Assembly acted as a rubber-stamping body, obediently and unanimously voting for the bills drafted by the government and the party with the necessary approval of the Soviet supervisors. In November 1947 the People's Assembly began to draw up a constitution for the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK). The draft was first sent to Moscow, where Stalin himself edited it (of course, this fact remained a secret until very recently).
Meanwhile, the Republic of Korea was proclaimed in the South and Pyongyang decided to organize alternative elections. There was an important peculiarity in this exercise: the North-sponsored elections had to be presented as nationwide. In other words, Pyongyang insisted that its parliament would be elected by all Koreans, including the Southerners. This would strengthen its claim to being the sole legitimate government of all of Korea, not just its northern part.
As was usual at that time, this rather bizarre idea initially came from Moscow. On April 24, 1948, the Soviet Politburo authorized a cable to Pyongyang: "If in South Korea separate elections are held and a [separate] South Korean government is organized, Comrade Shtykov will have to recommend to Comrade Kim Il-sung [North Korea's founder and leader] to convene a special session of the People's Assembly of North Korea to adopt the following decisions: a) until the unification of Korea the draft [constitution] of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, adopted by the April session of the People's Assembly, should be considered effective only for the territory of North Korea; b) according to the constitution, elections should be held for the Supreme People's Assembly of Korea." As we know, this scenario was strictly followed - how could it be otherwise?
On August 25, 1948, the elections for the Supreme People's Assembly indeed took place. The elections were alleged to have taken place in the South as well. These "clandestine elections" were presented as a "two-stage ballot". First, each South Korean region allegedly elected representatives who then would meet in the city of Haeju, in the North, to elect the 360 members who would represent the southern provinces in the DPRK Supreme People's Assembly.
Pyongyang asserted that 77.52% of all South Korean voters took part in the exercise. This figure was clearly fantastic; with the exception of a few areas where the left was especially strong, no South Korean ever cast his or her vote. In the North, the alleged participation rate was even higher - 99.97% of all registered voters, close to the normal Stalinist standard. However, in the late 1950s when North Korea began to steer itself away from Moscow, this old pattern began to appear dangerously moderate, even revisionist. If merely 99.97% took part in the vote, what about the remaining 0.03%? Were they opposing the state and party? No, it could not be possible!
Thus the 1962 elections demonstrated to the admiring world that the North Korean regime had reached a truly unprecedented level of popularity. According to the official data, in the 1962 elections 100% of the registered voters took part in the elections, and all of them voted for the officially approved candidate. This system continued. For decades to come the DPRK boasted the world's highest level of electoral activity and government support - 100.0% participation, 100.0% approval. No other communist country ever claimed anything like it. Of course, these figures gave the entire exercise a farce-like quality, but who cared? This 100% system lasted until the 1989 elections, when the approval level suddenly dropped to the marginally more plausible 99.9%, that is, to the communist camp's standard level.
On voting day, the North Koreans are not supposed to vote when it is convenient for them. They arrive at polling stations in the morning, and form long queues awaiting their turn. While waiting, they might be entertained by musicians or art troupes who give them yet another opportunity to listen to songs about the Great Leader Kim Il-sung, his son, the Dear Leader Kim Jong-il, and other members of the blessed Kim family. They also are entertained with skits about the happy life the Korean people lead under the wise guidance of these extraordinary leaders. Then the voters are called inside, usually according to the order in which their names appear in the register. Once inside the polling station, they present identification, and take the ballot paper. Then they make a deep bow to the portraits of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il and proceed to cast their ballots.
The Dear Leader Kim Jong-il followed the steps of his predecessors, including Stalin. Like them, he is a member of of the Supreme People's Assembly, of course. But no outsider, including an overwhelming majority of North Koreans, knows the location of the mysterious "No 642 District", which the great man represents. In this regard he is more secretive than other communist strongmen, the whereabouts of whose constituencies at least were known.
In spite of all these peculiar and bizarre features, North Korean officialdom always kept up appearances. In the postwar period, the elections (whether the 100% elections or the merely 99.9% elections) took place at regular intervals, with the most recent elections being held on August 3, 2003. The SPA also has always held its sessions on time. Even though Kim Jong-il was gradually pushing aside the party, another pillar of the traditional Soviet system, he kept up appearances with the SPA. Hence the current development - the unexplained delay in convening the SPA - is truly unprecedented. Even if the real meaning of the SPA is zero, as everybody has known for years, what does this postponement really mean? Well, maybe we'll learn this soon. Or maybe not ...
Dr Andrei Lankov is a lecturer in the faculty of Asian Studies, China and Korea Center, Australian National University. He graduated from Leningrad State University with a PhD in Far Eastern History and China, with emphasis on Korea, and his thesis focused on factionalism in the Yi Dynasty. He has published books and articles on Korea and North Asia. He is currently on leave, teaching at the Kookmin University, Seoul.
We still don't know. And it still hasn't met.
What is the Supreme People's Assembly? Ostensibly, it is the North Korean parliament. It is elected through popular vote even though, as we'll see, the vote is cast in a very particular, idiosyncratic way. The SPA approves the nation's laws and budget and confirms cabinet appointments. Like other "legislatures" in communist countries, it always votes unanimously, with all government proposals being approved without a single dissenting voice. It meets only twice a year, with each session lasting merely a few days, so the bills are prepared elsewhere, and voted on without any meaningful discussion. A person who is ready to waste time on reading boring and repetitive speeches of the delegates soon discovers that most speeches have nothing to do with the bills under discussion. The members usually use this opportunity to tell about the love and loyalty their constituencies allegedly feel toward the Dear Leader Kim Jong-il as well as to report the heroic feats of labor carried out in their native districts.
Do communist countries need parliaments at all? This is a good question, since of the manifold symbolic institutions of a communist state, its parliament is probably the most symbolic and most meaningless. Obviously, we are dealing with another surviving Stalinist tradition. When in 1936 the Soviet dictator Josef Stalin needed to present a facade of democracy (a necessary prerequisite for a broad anti-fascist alliance he was planning at the time), he devised a type of "rubber-stamping parliament" that would have some superficial similarities to authentic parliaments while being completely impotent as an institution. Its structure was eventually emulated across the entire communist world. All communist "legislatures" (if the word is applicable) lacked even shadow power, but few of them were so clearly symbolic as the North Korean SPA. And in a few cases the underlying lies were blatant.
The history of the SPA can be traced back to late 1946, when it was decided to hold the first elections in the North, to create a body known as the People's Assembly. Of course, the elections were to follow the Soviet prototype, based on two major principles. One of these principles is quite common in democracies: "one voter, one vote". Another one is quite peculiar: "one seat, one candidate". All candidates were pre-selected by the authorities, so the voters had a choice of either supporting a single available candidate or voting against him or her - but without the option of choosing another person.
To explain this obviously non-democratic arrangement, the communist regimes employed a fine piece of political demagogy. It was explained that the Communist Party and the "non-party masses" together formed an "electoral alliance". Since virtually everybody in the country was either a communist or a member of the "non-party masses", there were no reasons to have other candidates. If in a particular country there were other parties (as was the case in North Korea), they "joined" the communist-led alliance.
In practice, the list of candidates was approved by the party bureaucracy. A Soviet joke of the early 1980s (when this writer was in his youth) wryly captures the spirit of the system: "Is it possible to predict the results of the elections to the Supreme Soviet [state parliament] of the USSR [Union of Soviet Socialist Republics] in 2000? No. Why not? Because the Communist Party Central Committee has compiled the lists of deputies only until 1999."
How were these candidates selected? Somewhat surprisingly, we know how the mechanics worked in the case of the first North Korean "legislature", the People's Assembly that was elected in early 1947. Colonel-General Terentii Shtykov, the supreme supervisor of the Soviet-sponsored state-building in North Korea, had some unusual habits: this ruthless and brilliant self-didact scrupulously kept a diary in which he recorded major events of his political life - and he did so with remarkable frankness. This diary was eventually discovered by historians.
From Shtykov's diary we know that on December 19, 1946, Shtykov called a meeting with two other Soviet generals. The participants discussed the composition of the future North Korean legislature. It is worth mentioning that no Koreans took part in the discussions (so much for the now-popular thesis about "self-rule" allegedly promoted by the Soviets in the North - an idea increasingly powerful among South Korean left-leaning historians). The generals decided that the assembly would consist of 231 members, and distributed the seats among the parties. The ruling Korean Workers Party was given 35% of the places, the the Ch'ondogyo Party and the Democratic Party - two puppet parties already under communist control - were to receive 15% each (equality!). Thirty-five percent of the members were to have no party affiliation. It was good math: one-third to the communists, one-third to their junior partners and one-third to the "non-party masses".
In their wisdom, the generals even took care of women, whose representation was fixed at 15%. The social origin of the future deputies was also pre-determined: 40 workers, 50 peasants, 45 intellectuals, 10 traders, seven entrepreneurs, 10 priests, and 10 craftsmen (the remaining seats were probably supposed to go to the party bureaucrats). Obviously, the orders were later delivered to the nascent Korean bureaucracy to enact. We do not have documents showing how it was actually done. But the outcome of the elections speaks for itself. If we have a look at the actual composition of the 1947 People's Assembly, we can see that the above-mentioned Soviet instructions were followed with only minor deviations.
The 1947 elections had another peculiarity. There were different ballot boxes for voting "for" and "against" the pre-selected candidate (white and black respectively). Of course, officials could easily spot those who dared to approach black boxes. Avoiding participation in the elections was also dangerous: everybody understood that an absentee tried to avoid not the elections per se, but the necessity to vote for a government-selected candidate. This "black-white box" system continued until the late 1950s.
The People's Assembly acted as a rubber-stamping body, obediently and unanimously voting for the bills drafted by the government and the party with the necessary approval of the Soviet supervisors. In November 1947 the People's Assembly began to draw up a constitution for the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK). The draft was first sent to Moscow, where Stalin himself edited it (of course, this fact remained a secret until very recently).
Meanwhile, the Republic of Korea was proclaimed in the South and Pyongyang decided to organize alternative elections. There was an important peculiarity in this exercise: the North-sponsored elections had to be presented as nationwide. In other words, Pyongyang insisted that its parliament would be elected by all Koreans, including the Southerners. This would strengthen its claim to being the sole legitimate government of all of Korea, not just its northern part.
As was usual at that time, this rather bizarre idea initially came from Moscow. On April 24, 1948, the Soviet Politburo authorized a cable to Pyongyang: "If in South Korea separate elections are held and a [separate] South Korean government is organized, Comrade Shtykov will have to recommend to Comrade Kim Il-sung [North Korea's founder and leader] to convene a special session of the People's Assembly of North Korea to adopt the following decisions: a) until the unification of Korea the draft [constitution] of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, adopted by the April session of the People's Assembly, should be considered effective only for the territory of North Korea; b) according to the constitution, elections should be held for the Supreme People's Assembly of Korea." As we know, this scenario was strictly followed - how could it be otherwise?
On August 25, 1948, the elections for the Supreme People's Assembly indeed took place. The elections were alleged to have taken place in the South as well. These "clandestine elections" were presented as a "two-stage ballot". First, each South Korean region allegedly elected representatives who then would meet in the city of Haeju, in the North, to elect the 360 members who would represent the southern provinces in the DPRK Supreme People's Assembly.
Pyongyang asserted that 77.52% of all South Korean voters took part in the exercise. This figure was clearly fantastic; with the exception of a few areas where the left was especially strong, no South Korean ever cast his or her vote. In the North, the alleged participation rate was even higher - 99.97% of all registered voters, close to the normal Stalinist standard. However, in the late 1950s when North Korea began to steer itself away from Moscow, this old pattern began to appear dangerously moderate, even revisionist. If merely 99.97% took part in the vote, what about the remaining 0.03%? Were they opposing the state and party? No, it could not be possible!
Thus the 1962 elections demonstrated to the admiring world that the North Korean regime had reached a truly unprecedented level of popularity. According to the official data, in the 1962 elections 100% of the registered voters took part in the elections, and all of them voted for the officially approved candidate. This system continued. For decades to come the DPRK boasted the world's highest level of electoral activity and government support - 100.0% participation, 100.0% approval. No other communist country ever claimed anything like it. Of course, these figures gave the entire exercise a farce-like quality, but who cared? This 100% system lasted until the 1989 elections, when the approval level suddenly dropped to the marginally more plausible 99.9%, that is, to the communist camp's standard level.
On voting day, the North Koreans are not supposed to vote when it is convenient for them. They arrive at polling stations in the morning, and form long queues awaiting their turn. While waiting, they might be entertained by musicians or art troupes who give them yet another opportunity to listen to songs about the Great Leader Kim Il-sung, his son, the Dear Leader Kim Jong-il, and other members of the blessed Kim family. They also are entertained with skits about the happy life the Korean people lead under the wise guidance of these extraordinary leaders. Then the voters are called inside, usually according to the order in which their names appear in the register. Once inside the polling station, they present identification, and take the ballot paper. Then they make a deep bow to the portraits of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il and proceed to cast their ballots.
The Dear Leader Kim Jong-il followed the steps of his predecessors, including Stalin. Like them, he is a member of of the Supreme People's Assembly, of course. But no outsider, including an overwhelming majority of North Koreans, knows the location of the mysterious "No 642 District", which the great man represents. In this regard he is more secretive than other communist strongmen, the whereabouts of whose constituencies at least were known.
In spite of all these peculiar and bizarre features, North Korean officialdom always kept up appearances. In the postwar period, the elections (whether the 100% elections or the merely 99.9% elections) took place at regular intervals, with the most recent elections being held on August 3, 2003. The SPA also has always held its sessions on time. Even though Kim Jong-il was gradually pushing aside the party, another pillar of the traditional Soviet system, he kept up appearances with the SPA. Hence the current development - the unexplained delay in convening the SPA - is truly unprecedented. Even if the real meaning of the SPA is zero, as everybody has known for years, what does this postponement really mean? Well, maybe we'll learn this soon. Or maybe not ...
Dr Andrei Lankov is a lecturer in the faculty of Asian Studies, China and Korea Center, Australian National University. He graduated from Leningrad State University with a PhD in Far Eastern History and China, with emphasis on Korea, and his thesis focused on factionalism in the Yi Dynasty. He has published books and articles on Korea and North Asia. He is currently on leave, teaching at the Kookmin University, Seoul.
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