N. Korea to hold key parliamentary meet on Oct 7 to revise constitution

Seoul, Sep 16 (IANS) North Korea will hold a key parliamentary meeting next month to mainly amend the country's constitution, state media reported Monday, after its leader Kim Jong-un called for the constitutional revision to define South Korea as its primary foe.

The 11th Session of the 14th Supreme People's Assembly (SPA) will be convened in Pyongyang on October 7, according to the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).

In a SPA meeting in January, North Korea's leader called for revising the constitution to define South Korea as its "invariable principal enemy" and codify the commitment to "completely occupying" the South Korean territory in the event of war, reported Yonhap news agency.

Kim issued an order to review the constitutional revision in a way that removes unification-related clauses and newly stipulates the country's territorial boundaries, including the maritime border.

At a year-end party meeting in December, he defined inter-Korean ties as relations between "two states hostile to each other". He vowed not to regard the South as a counterpart for reconciliation and unification.

South Korea's unification ministry earlier said North Korea may scrap an inter-Korean basic agreement signed in 1991 as its next SPA meeting.

Under the 1991 agreement, inter-Korean ties were designated as a "special relationship" tentatively formed in the process of seeking reunification, not as state-to-state relations.

The KCNA said along with the issue of amending and supplementing the country's socialist constitution, North Korea will discuss the issue of deliberating and adopting laws on light industry and external economic affairs and supervising the enforcement of the quality control law.

The SPA is the highest organ of state power under the North's constitution, but it actually only rubber-stamps decisions by the ruling Workers' Party.

Meanwhile, North Korea is likely to hold an election before long to pick new SPA deputies, as it announced a decision to convene a parliamentary meeting next month.

As North Korea elected deputies to the 14th SPA for a five-year term in March 2019, it was supposed to pick new deputies in March. However, the regime has not even made a public notice of the schedule to elect new SPA deputies.

Experts said North Korea appears to have postponed the election as it was working on reviewing the constitutional revision, as ordered by its leader Kim.

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