After Japan’s 1945 surrender, the northern half of Korea was administered under Soviet occupation and local communist-led bodies. These early governing structures set the stage for creating a separate northern state with its own legislature and constitution.
Representatives from provincial, city, and county people’s committees met to create the People’s Assembly of North Korea, a temporary legislature. It helped organize the North’s governing institutions before a formal constitution and state were proclaimed.
The People’s Assembly organized a committee to prepare a provisional constitution for a future DPRK state. This step began the formal legal process that would define state organs, elections, and citizens’ rights and duties.
A draft constitution was circulated for an “all-people discussion,” presented as a broad public consultation process. This campaign helped the new leadership claim popular support for the legal framework of a separate northern state.
In its final session, the People’s Assembly adopted the draft constitution that would be carried into the new state. It also set the stage for elections to a new national legislature, the Supreme People’s Assembly (SPA).
Elections were held for the first Supreme People’s Assembly, which would replace the temporary People’s Assembly. The SPA was designed to be the state’s highest formal organ of power under the coming constitution.
The 1st SPA met in early September 1948 to complete the institutional transition from a provisional system to a declared state. In this first session, it discussed and adopted the founding constitution for the DPRK system.
The Supreme People’s Assembly adopted the DPRK’s first constitution, modeled in important ways on Soviet constitutional design. It established the SPA as the highest state organ and set out the structure of central and local institutions.
The DPRK was proclaimed the next day, marking the public start of a separate North Korean state. Kim Il Sung became premier of the Cabinet, linking the new constitutional order to a centralized executive leadership.
A new constitution—widely known as the Socialist Constitution—was ratified, replacing the 1948 framework. It created a DPRK presidency and reorganized key state organs, including the Central People’s Committee, strengthening top-down control.
Within the 1972 constitutional structure, the National Defense Commission existed under the Central People’s Committee, with the president tied to top military authority. This helped concentrate military leadership within the highest state institutions during the Kim Il Sung era.
A major amendment revised the Socialist Constitution amid the end of the Cold War order. It removed references to Marxism–Leninism and elevated Juche (the state’s “self-reliance” ideology) as a guiding principle, while restructuring defense leadership by separating the National Defense Commission from the Central People’s Committee.
Constitutional Development of the DPRK (1948–1992)