SEOUL, South Korea – North Korean leader Kim Jong-un was reappointed as president of state affairs, state media KCNA reported on Monday, March 23, after the first session of the Supreme People’s Assembly convened a day earlier.

The Pyongyang meeting will discuss amendments and supplements to the socialist constitution, as well as the election of the chairman of the State Affairs Commission and other state leadership bodies.

The assembly, North Korea‘s rubber-stamp legislature that formally approves state policy, usually meets after a ruling Workers’ Party Congress to turn party decisions into law.

The session will also review the country’s economic five-year plan announced at the ninth party congress in February, KCNA said.

Attention has centered on whether Pyongyang will revise its constitution to formalize Kim Jong-un’s “two hostile states” policy toward South Korea.

In recent years, Kim has abandoned the long-standing goal of peaceful reunification, redefining the South as a hostile state.

Kim’s powerful sister, Kim Yo Jong, was notably absent from KCNA’s list of members of the State Affairs Commission, the country’s top leadership body, on which she had served since 2021.

South Korea‘s Unification Ministry said it was investigating why she was no longer listed, but analysts said the move did not necessarily signal a loss of influence.

“Her absence suggests not a decline in status but a strategic division of roles,” said Lim Eul-chul, a professor at Kyungnam University, adding that the younger Kim continues to wield real power as a department director in the ruling Workers’ Party, where she may play a higher-level, party-centered role coordinating policy. – Rappler.com