North Korea is a one-party socialist state run by the Workers' Party of Korea (WPK), with the Kim family in control since the country's founding in 1948. Kim Jong Un is head of state as President of State Affairs and is also the party's General Secretary. The head of government is Premier Pak Thae-song, appointed in December 2024. The legislature is the single-chamber Supreme People's Assembly (SPA) of 687 deputies, last elected on 15 March 2026. The current constitution dates from 1972 and has been amended many times since, most recently in 2026. Elections are held on schedule and turnout is reported at close to 100%. But each constituency has one approved candidate, so the vote confirms decisions already made inside the party rather than choosing between rivals. Looking at how those elections and parties work is the clearest way to see where power actually sits.
How a Supreme People's Assembly Election Works
The constitution calls the SPA the "highest organ of state power". Under its principle of unified power, every other state body is elected by it and answers to it: the President of State Affairs, the State Affairs Commission, the Cabinet, the Supreme Court and the Supreme Public Prosecutor's Office. Each of the 687 constituencies returns one deputy for a five-year term. Every citizen aged 17 or over may vote and stand for election.
In practice the WPK picks the candidates. When a North Korean official described the procedure to the Inter-Parliamentary Union's association of parliamentary secretaries general, he explained it this way. Parties make the nominations. A front organisation and then the Central Election Committee review them and allocate candidates to seats. Voters then "consider" their candidate at meetings at their workplaces. On election day the ballot carries a single name. A voter shows approval by dropping it in the box unmarked. To vote against, they must cross the name out, and the booth gives little real privacy for doing so. Voting is compulsory, and defectors and outside researchers describe a no vote or a no-show as a risk to a person's job and housing. Because the near-total turnout is checked against residence lists, analysts also describe elections as an informal census. Neighbourhood watch units reportedly check the rolls to identify and investigate anyone who fails to turn up.
The 15 March 2026 Election: 687 Deputies and 0.07% Against
The 14th SPA was elected in 2019, so its five-year term ran out in 2024. No election was called that year, and outside observers took it as a sign of delay. The vote was eventually announced on 4 March 2026, days after the WPK's 9th Congress (19 to 25 February 2026) re-elected Kim Jong Un as General Secretary. Decision No. 361 of the SPA Standing Committee set up a Central Election Committee chaired by Kim Hyong-sik. Holding the election straight after the party congress synchronised the two events.
Polling took place on 15 March 2026. Kim Jong Un voted in Constituency No. 150 at the Chonsong Youth Coal Mine in South Pyongan Province, for the mine's manager, Jo Chol-ho. The Central Election Committee reported a turnout of 99.99%. It said 0.0037% of voters were abroad or at sea and 0.00003% abstained. According to the official results published on 17 March, 99.93% of votes approved the registered candidates and 0.07% rejected them. That made 2026 the first SPA election since 1957 in which state media reported any votes against. The 1st Session of the 15th SPA was then called for 22 March, much sooner than the usual one-month gap.
From 572 Seats in 1948 to 687 in 2019
The first SPA election, on 25 August 1948, was organised under the Soviet Civil Administration after the People's Assembly of North Korea announced it on 9 July 1948. It produced 572 deputies. Of these, 212 represented the North. The other 360 were said to represent the South, chosen indirectly through delegates in what Pyongyang described as underground elections. That assembly proclaimed the Democratic People's Republic of Korea on 9 September 1948. The 1948 constitution set one deputy per 50,000 people. The Socialist Constitution adopted on 27 December 1972 fixed the chamber at 655 seats, and it has had 687 since the 1986 election.
Since then the pattern has hardly changed, apart from the gaps in the 1990s. After Kim Il Sung died in July 1994, the assembly did not meet and no election was held until July 1998, four years later. The 1998 vote showed the military's rise under Kim Jong Il: 101 of the 687 deputies were military officials, up from 57 in 1990. On 9 March 2014, in the first election under Kim Jong Un, he stood in the symbolic Mount Paektu constituency. Officials said every vote there was "yes". On 10 March 2019 he did not stand at all, the first time a North Korean leader had stayed off the ballot. The Central Election Committee reported 99.99% turnout and unanimous approval for all 687 candidates.
The 2023 Local Elections and the Two-Ballot-Box Trial
Below the SPA, voters elect provincial, city and county people's assemblies every four years, a cycle that began in 1999. In 2023 the SPA Standing Committee changed the election law. According to Minju Choson, the Cabinet and Standing Committee newspaper, some constituencies would now hold a primary-style contest between two candidates. Both would be vetted for loyalty and "revolutionary mindset", and the winner would then run alone in the main vote. Crossing out names was replaced by two ballot boxes of different colours, one for yes and one for no.
The new rules were first used in the local elections of 26 November 2023. Officials reported a turnout of 99.63%, down from 99.98% four years earlier. For provincial assemblies, 99.91% of votes were in favour and 0.09% against; for city and county assemblies, 99.87% and 0.13%. In total 27,858 local deputies were elected. These were the first opposing votes published in a local election since 1956. South Korea's Unification Ministry said the coloured boxes made it obvious how each person voted. Yonhap suggested the figures were released to make the vote look democratic. The scholar Andrei Lankov of Kookmin University in Seoul has pointed out a parallel at local level. An elected mayor or governor may hold the formal post, but the real power usually lies with the WPK secretary for the same city or province.
Three Legal Parties and the Front Dissolved in March 2024
North Korea is often called a one-party state, but three parties are legal. The Workers' Party of Korea was formed in 1949 by merging the northern and southern workers' parties, and the constitution recognises its leading role. Kim Jong Un has led it since 2012, under the title General Secretary since its 8th Congress in January 2021. That congress also replaced the "military-first" Songun line with "people-first politics". The Korean Social Democratic Party was founded on 3 November 1945 as the Korean Democratic Party by Cho Man-sik's circle of business owners, farmers and Christians. Soviet authorities arrested Cho in 1946 and purged his supporters. The Chondoist Chongu Party, founded on 8 February 1946, is linked to the Ch'ŏndogyo religion, whose place in North Korean life is covered in religion in North Korea. Both small parties now act as satellites of the WPK.
For most of the country's history all three sat in a single list run by the Democratic Front for the Reunification of Korea, founded on 25 June 1949. The front selected every candidate at mass meetings, so the WPK could decide the make-up of the SPA in advance. The 1990 assembly, for example, had 601 WPK deputies, 51 Social Democrats, 22 Chondoists and 13 independents. The historian Fyodor Tertitskiy notes that seat breakdowns like this are sent to the United Nations but are probably invented. Inside North Korea, deputies are simply described as party members. The front was dissolved on 23 March 2024, after Kim Jong Un announced that the North was giving up the goal of peaceful reunification with the South.
How the Assembly Forms a Government: Kim Jong Un, Pak Thae-song and the Standing Committee
Once elected, the SPA's first session fills the top state posts. It elects the President of State Affairs. That office has existed since 29 June 2016, when the State Affairs Commission replaced the National Defence Commission, and was made head of state by an amendment of 11 April 2019. Since February 2021 the official English title has been "President of State Affairs". Its term runs with the assembly's, with no limit on re-election, and the post is held by the WPK General Secretary. Its holder commands the armed forces, appoints senior officials, concludes treaties and has full control of the nuclear arsenal. Kim Jong Un has held it since its creation.
The SPA also appoints the Premier, who heads the Cabinet, and it confirms the ministers the Premier nominates. Pak Thae-song, Assembly chairman from 2021 to 2023, became Premier on 29 December 2024 at a party plenary meeting. On 22 March 2026 the new assembly re-elected him Premier and a vice president of the State Affairs Commission. The constitution was also amended again in 2026, and the word "Socialist" was dropped from its title.
Day-to-day law-making falls to the SPA Standing Committee, because the full assembly meets for only a few days a year, in one or two sessions. Its chairman was the ceremonial head of state until 2019; Kim Yong-nam held that role from 1998 to 2019. Choe Ryong-hae chaired the body from April 2019. In March 2026 Jo Yong-won replaced him, only to be recalled that June at a WPK Central Committee plenum and moved to the party Secretariat. That move showed again that party decisions come before the assembly's formal votes. The assembly meets in the Mansudae Assembly Hall, one of the state buildings of Pyongyang, North Korea's capital. More on the country's land, cities and borders is in the North Korea country guide.