North Korea elected 687 deputies to the 15th Supreme People’s Assembly (SPA) on March 15, 2026, the first such election in seven years, for a five-year term, and convened its first session on March 22–23. At the first meeting of the 15th SPA, North Korea discussed agenda items including: the election of the president of the State Affairs Commission; the election of state leadership bodies and sectoral committees of the Supreme People’s Assembly; amendments and supplements to the Socialist Constitution; the thorough implementation of the five-year national economic development plan presented at the 9th Party Congress; and the settlement of the 2025 state budget and the 2026 state budget. Kim Jong Un then delivered a policy speech.

In his policy speech, Kim Jong Un referred only briefly to two “achievements” of the past seven years: the entrenchment of the line of self-reliance and the securing of North Korea’s status as a nuclear weapons state. This appeared to signal that the public would once again be expected to “tighten its belt.”

As tasks for the organs of the regime, in the political and social spheres, he presented “independence, self-sustenance, and self-defense” and the precedence of ideology as the guiding principles of state activity, while also raising the issues of promoting a new police system and establishing moral discipline. In the economic sphere, he identified as the tasks “to which efforts must be directed” the need to increase strained electricity and coal production and to resolve the food problem, described as the most urgent task. In the military sphere, citing the “complex international situation,” he called for strengthening defense capabilities by giving top priority to the provision of human and material resources.

In terms of external relations, he made North Korea’s anti-U.S. hostility even more explicit than at the Party Congress. Regarding South Korea, he formally recognized South Korea as the “most hostile state,” and revealed his determination to pursue a “struggle against the enemy,” thereby further amplifying and reproducing a sense of internal tension.

This article is an English Summary of Asan Issue Brief (2026-12).

(‘북한의 최고인민회의 제15기 제1차 회의 및 김정은 시정연설 평가’)