On March 15, North Korea will hold its first national level elections since 2019. After being delayed for two years, the Kim Jong Un regime delivered a short notice announcement last week that the country would be visiting the ballot boxes to cast their votes for their representatives in the Supreme People’s Assembly.

There is a common misconception that these elections mean nothing – that they are an exercise in “cosplay diplomacy” and nothing more. Certainly, these elections are not important based on competing outcomes; rather, they are a window into the North Korean system of governance, its policy priorities, and how – if at all – it is evolving.

This is particularly important given the changes to North Korea’s election law in October 2023. At the time, the Kim regime flirted with incremental changes to the manner in which it carried out votes at the municipal and provincial levels. Whether any of these changes will extend to the national level remains unclear.

Background on the Supreme People’s Assembly

The Supreme People’s Assembly (SPA) is the core institution used to justify the “democratic” part of North Korea’s official name: The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. The SPA formed in the late 1940s, largely owing to the United Nations demands that free and fair elections take place on the Korean Peninsula. North Korea, desiring to appear the more democratic of the two Koreas, held its first election on August 25, 1948. There have been 14 elections until now, taking place on the following days:

• August 25, 1948 
• August 27, 1957
• October 8, 1962
• November 28, 1967 
• December 12, 1972 
• November 11, 1977 
• February 28, 1982 
• November 2, 1986 
• April 22, 1990 
• July 26,1998
• August 3, 2003 
• March 8, 2009
• March 9, 2014 
• March 10, 2019

The irregularity of timing is notable, because it indicates that the regime will shift the elections as it deems necessary.

The SPA is composed of elected “deputies” who are meant to serve five-year terms. In the SPA, the deputies are meant to carry out 17 constitutionally mandated tasks, but real policymaking power in the North Korean government rests within the Workers’ Party of Korea institutions. The SPA’s function in this arrangement is not to deliberate policy or legal matters, but to formalize the regime’s decision-making and codify it into what counts for North Korean law. This is why the media and outside observers tend to refer to the SPA as the “rubber-stamp legislature.”

This does not, however, mean that the SPA elections or the SPA itself are irrelevant within the North Korean system of governance. While less important as a policy and legal formation body, it is a mechanism for managing elite power dynamics and implementing the regime’s policy designs.

The Mechanics of North Korean Elections

North Korea likes to portray Election Day as a festive affair. The process of casting ballots is a unique exercise in North Korea. The government carries it out in such a way as to maintain the appearance of a real election while ensuring that preselected candidates achieve near-unanimous victories. At the same time, the mandatory voting requirement and strict registration of participation ensures that these elections double as a de facto census in the country.

There is mixed reporting on how ballots are cast. Some reports suggest that a government official observes individuals as they cast their ballots. A firsthand account from a former diplomat in North Korea stated that individuals were alone in the room with the ballot box. Likely, both are correct, since different constituencies and polling stations may handle the actual mechanics of voting differently.

Traditionally, every constituency only puts one candidate forward, and election officials hand write that person’s name onto all the ballots before voting begins. The voter’s name is recorded in a ledger. Every citizen of voting age is required to vote in the SPA election, and local officials keep track of this via these handwritten ledgers. The voter then enters a room with a ballot box. There is a pencil on the box, which can be used to cast a dissenting vote by drawing a line through the name that is on the ballot.

Members of the Kim family are elected as SPA deputies and participate in casting ballots. Kim Jong Un relinquished his deputy seat in the 2019 election to separate him from other North Korean officials and to give space for his elevation as president of the SPA’s State Affairs Commission. The government later codified into law that the head of state cannot serve as an elected deputy. 

Meanwhile, his sister, Kim Yo Jong, is a SPA deputy, and will likely be re-elected this coming weekend.

2023 Electoral Reforms

In August 2023, the North Korean government amended its election law and experimented with modest procedural changes at the local level. While these reforms did not introduce genuine political competition, they did alter how candidates are nominated and how ballots are cast.

The revised election law introduced a limited multi-candidate system in which two candidates may be nominated within a constituency. Candidates can be recommended by the Workers’ Party, suggested by voters, or receive a party endorsement through the nomination process. The law also modified the voting mechanism. Instead of a single ballot with the option to strike through a candidate’s name, voters may receive two candidate cards and place one in a “yes” box and the other in a “no” box to indicate their choice. Election committees were organized nationwide to administer the process, including candidate registration, voter roll verification, election publicity, and the confirmation of results.

The reforms also formalized elections for deputies at three administrative levels: provincial (municipal), city (district), and county people’s assemblies. Election infrastructure was established to support these contests, including a central election guidance committee and subordinate constituency-level committees. 

Additional procedural steps included the display of voter rolls for public verification, meetings between voters and candidates to examine candidate qualifications, and polling station preparations ahead of voting. These changes were implemented for the elections of deputies to provincial, city, and county people’s assemblies held on November 26, 2023.

The March 15 Election

There are two key things to observe in the forthcoming elections: potential realignment and reform.

On realignment, the two-year delay is instructive. Based on the five-year terms, the election should have taken place in March 2024, but holding off until now appears aimed at realigning the SPA elections with Workers’ Party congresses. The Ninth Party Congress ended in late February, and it is reasonable to conclude that the intent going forward will be for the party congress to happen with the SPA elections following shortly thereafter. This sequencing allows the regime to make personnel changes within the party during the congress and then quickly institutionalize those changes through the SPA.

With regard to reform, it will be important to observe whether North Korea changes the rules at all for this election. What happened in 2023 was a deviation for North Korea’s baseline electoral behavior, and while few observers could credibly argue that North Korea intends to become more democratic, this election ought to provide at least some more indication as to why the regime took the action it did three years ago. Perhaps it was a failed experiment that will go abandoned in this next election, or maybe there will be some incremental yet notable change in the North Korean electoral process.

Ultimately, the significance of the March 15 election lies less in its outcome than in what the process reveals about North Korea’s political system. For outside observers, these elections serve a diagnostic purpose rather than a democratic one, offering a rare glimpse into how Pyongyang organizes authority, signals internal adjustments, and presents the image of governance both to its citizens and the outside world.