A Study on North Korean Administrative Law System and Contents
Authors:   Korean Public Land Law Association, Choi Yongjeon 
Published: December 2022

When North Korea adopted 'our-style socialism' in its constitution in 1992, it explicitly stated that it would strengthen 'socialist legal life', and granted the title of 'exemplary law compliance unit' to enterprises that practiced law-abiding life to realize socialist legal life. In addition, the legal commentator system emphasizes compliance with the law. And in North Korea, through the democratic centralization system, state institutions with the Supreme People's Assembly as the apex guide all the lives of the people, and the order of the market economy is being denied. Therefore, it is difficult to find a judicial realm in North Korea's legal order, and most of the legal order is a public legal realm, and it can be seen that it is composed of statutes corresponding to administrative law with the constitution as the apex. However, this principle, called democratic centralism or democratic centralism, is that the will of the citizens is democratically converged to the center and power is concentrated in the Supreme People's Assembly, and this principle is shown in the North Korean Constitution as it is. Therefore, the concept of administration, which started from the theory of separation of powers, which separates state power into three powers, legislative, judicial, and administrative, cannot be harmonized with democratic centralism. is also a contradictory ideology. In addition, looking at the types and names of administrative laws in North Korea, the statutes and decisions of the Supreme People's Assembly, the orders of the Chairman of the State Affairs Commission, the decrees, decisions and directives of the State Affairs Commission, the decrees, decisions and directives of the Supreme People's Committee Standing Committee, and the decisions and directives of the Cabinet And there are decisions and instructions of the provincial People's Committee. In addition, since 1998, there are ‘Sector Act’ and ‘Regulation’ that have been used instead of statutes. Among these regulations, the highest regulation would be the order of the chairperson, and this order sometimes functions as a superordinate norm of the constitution. In addition, there are statutes and ordinances that can be considered sectoral laws as sub-norms of orders, and regulations including decisions and instructions can be considered as sub-norms of sectoral laws. The administrative executive body in North Korea is the Cabinet, which also serves as the overall state management body, and the local People's Committee is the administrative executive body of local sovereignty. These administrative executive bodies are structured in a hierarchical structure with the Supreme People's Assembly, and furthermore, there is a restriction that they must operate under the leadership of the Workers' Party of Korea. These central administrative agencies are conducting administrative activities including administrative acts, and local administrative agencies are developing various resident administrative projects. In order to strengthen social rule of law in North Korea, declaring ‘socialist legal life’, explaining the law to North Koreans and emphasizing compliance is similar to South Korea’s rule of law. In accordance with the ‘Law Enactment Law of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’ enacted and adopted in 2012, North Korea continues to carry out legislative reform, and is actively engaged in enactment and amendment of laws, claiming to aim for a ‘normal state’. This phenomenon can be seen as an activity close to South Korea's rule of law. This phenomenon can be seen positively in terms of the integration of the South and North Korean laws. However, North Korea's Administrative Law has improved a lot compared to the past, but the intentions of the Labor Party and the Chairman of the State Affairs Commission still have a superior effect. Therefore,