Constitution of the DPRK (1948)

Drafting and adoption

The collapse of the US-Soviet Joint Commission on 21 October 1947 ended the attempt to establish a unified provisional government, and a separate constitutional process began in the North. In the South the South Korean Interim Legislative Assembly had already opened on 12 December 1946 and was drafting an interim constitution of its own. The third session of the People's Assembly of North Korea (18–19 November 1947) named 31 members of a provisional constitution-drafting committee, and a draft written in December 1947 was submitted to the fourth session on 6–7 February 1948. The all-people discussion ran about two months and produced 58,000 statements of support for the draft and 2,236 proposals for amendment or addition; at that stage the constitution was 10 chapters and 102 articles.

It was the special session of the People's Assembly of North Korea of 28–29 April 1948 that adopted the draft. The session unanimously adopted the text submitted by the constitution-drafting committee as it stood. The fifth session of 9–10 July 1948 then merely decided to put the already adopted constitution into effect in the North and to hold Supreme People's Assembly elections on 25 August; the English Wikipedia statement that the Assembly "adopted the draft constitution" on 10 July 1948 conflates adoption with the implementation decision. The first session of the first Supreme People's Assembly promulgated the constitution on 8 September 1948, and the DPRK was proclaimed the following day, 9 September.

Soviet involvement in the process is documented. On 10 July 1948 the Soviet Politburo instructed Shtykov to implement the constitution through the People's Assembly of North Korea, which meshes with the implementation decision taken by the fifth session that same day. Andrei Lankov writes that the 1948 constitution was personally edited by Joseph Stalin together with Terentii Shtykov, head of the Soviet occupation, in Moscow, and that some articles were later rewritten by Soviet supervisors. The Shtykov article likewise states that the original 1948 North Korean constitution was primarily authored by Stalin and Shtykov in Moscow. This is an attributed assessment, not presented here as neutral fact.

Model and structure

The structure of government was heavily modeled on the 1936 Soviet constitution, known as the Stalin Constitution. The Academy of Korean Studies encyclopedia states that the Soviet constitution served as its prototype, while the Columbia Korean Legal Studies study specifies the 1936 Stalin Constitution. The Supreme People's Assembly was placed as the highest organ of state authority and the sole source of power for all other constitutional bodies, mirroring the Supreme Soviet.

The document consists of a preamble, 10 chapters and 104 articles: Chapter 1 Fundamental Principles (Articles 1 to 10), Chapter 2 Fundamental Rights and Duties of Citizens (from Article 11), Chapter 3 Highest Organ of Sovereignty (the Supreme People's Assembly, Article 32), Chapter 4 Central Organs of State Administration (the Cabinet), Chapter 5 Local Organs of Sovereignty, Chapter 6 Courts and Procurator's Offices, and on to Chapter 9 State Emblem, Flag and Capital and Chapter 10 Procedure for Amending the Constitution (Article 104).

It codified the reforms carried out in the North after 1946, land reform and the nationalization of industries and resources, along with various freedoms and rights. It made the Supreme People's Assembly the highest state organ, with the Standing Committee acting during recess and representing the country abroad, and made the Cabinet the highest executive organ with the Premier as head of government. Article 33 provided that legislative power was exercised by the Supreme People's Assembly alone.

Content and distinctive features

The constitution defined the DPRK as a "people's democracy" transitioning toward socialism, made no reference to Juche, and remained in force for about 24 years. Unlike the later socialist constitution, it broadly protected private ownership. Article 5 provided that means of production belong to the state, cooperative bodies, or private natural and legal persons, while nationalizing mines, forests, major enterprises, banks, railways, transport, aviation and communications; Article 8 protected legally defined private ownership and guaranteed inheritance. Article 6 confiscated the land of the Japanese state, Japanese individuals and Korean landlords and abolished the tenant-farming system, with land assigned to those who tilled it by their own labour and limited to a maximum of 5 or 20 jeongbo depending on region.

Rights and duties of citizens were also codified: equality (Article 11), suffrage from age 20 (Article 12), freedom of speech, the press and assembly (Article 13), freedom of religion (Article 14), inviolability of the home and correspondence (Article 21), protection against arbitrary arrest (Article 24) and the right to petition (Article 25). Article 29 set tax obligations calibrated to economic circumstances. The Columbia study notes that whether these rights were protected in practice remains uncertain. Article 103 designated Seoul as the capital, and Article 104 confined constitutional amendment to the Supreme People's Assembly, requiring a two-thirds majority of all deputies.

Amendments and replacement

It was amended several times, on 23 April 1954, 30 October 1954, 11 March 1955, 7 November 1956 and 18 October 1962, but these remained minor amendments. The socialist constitution adopted at the first session of the fifth Supreme People's Assembly on 27 December 1972 replaced it. That Article 103 designated Seoul as the capital at the time of adoption shows how the constitution handled the division of the country.