North Korean Policy Elites - Defense Technical Information Center

policy began to loosen up. Party and state functions appeared to be increasingly delimited, and
other domestic actors, especially the national security establishment, began to move to the
forefront in the domestic policy-making process. But, some institutions suffered relative decline.
For instance, the elections for the Supreme People’s Assembly, whose 9th term expired in the
fall of 1995, were not held until July 1998, and the Assembly failed to convene for four years
following Kim Il Sung’s death. The WPK Central Committee and Politburo held no plenary
meetings, party conferences, or congresses. The DPRK Administrative Council was all but
invisible. The State Presidency and the Central People’s Committee, which had functioned as a
“super-cabinet” of sorts since 1972, were not functioning. Natural attrition of the older “guerrilla
fighter” generation rapidly progressed. Substantively, interpretation and implementation of the
Great Leader’s last will (yuhun chongch’i) amidst aggravating domestic economic crisis and
deteriorating international environment has been the raison d’etre of Kim Jong Il’s rule ever
since.
C. KIM JONG IL’S REVOLUTION FROM ABOVE
In the tumultuous decade following Kim Il Sung’s death on July 8, 1994, after initial
shock and a three-year policy-making hiatus, Kim Jong Il finally took the plunge and introduced
a major constitutional revision and government administration restructuring in September 1998,
followed by a civil-military readjustment and advent of the army-first policy in 2000. He
launched a still-born diplomatic “normalization” offensive and actively pursued summit
diplomacy in 2000-2002, and he successfully pushed through controversial economic
liberalization reforms in July 2002. The First Session of the 10th Supreme People’s Assembly
(SPA) passed a new “Kim Jong Il-era” Constitution, which:
• abolished the institution of the President and Vice-President;
• diminished the powers and status of the Central People’s Committee;
• made the National Defense Commission the supreme state organ defining national security
and defense strategy, and economic and political development strategies;
• appointed Kim Jong Il as the de-facto supreme leader;
• made the President of the Presidium of the SPA as a formal “head of state” (plus three
vice-presidents and four “honorary vice-presidents”);
• abolished the Administrative Council and instituted the Cabinet of Ministers composed
mainly of the economic ministries, while all “power-related ministries” were subordinated
directly to the National Defense Commission;
• legalized private ownership; and
• curtailed the WPK party rule and expanded the scope of religious freedoms in the DPRK.
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