[ANALYSIS] With new title, N.K. leader seen tightening grip, boosting diplomacy

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is forecast to tighten his grip with yet another title as chief of the new state affairs body and shore up diplomacy following a parliamentary assembly, Seoul officials and experts said Thursday.

The Supreme People’s Assembly convened a session Wednesday introducing the creation of the State Affairs Commission and naming Kim its chairman, which is the “top position” in the country, according to state media.

The rubber-stamp parliament also relaunched the Committee for the Peaceful Unification of the Fatherland as an independent state organ in charge of inter-Korean affairs, detaching it from the ruling Workers’ Party.

The change marks North Korea’s first constitutional amendment since 1998.

It reflects the young leader’s drive to dilute his late father’s “songun (military first)” policy and boost his prestige as the commander-in-chief after assuming the party chairmanship at last month’s party congress.

“With the announcement, Kim has now completed his own power structure within the state apparatus and party,” Seoul’s Unification Ministry said in its analysis.

“The new commission would make little difference in terms of the concentration of power, but its installation and the promotion of the committee could be seen as an attempt to turn the country into a ‘normal state.’”

Another striking feature was that the 12-strong commission includes two diplomats -- former Foreign Minister Ri Su-yong and incumbent Foreign Minister Ri Yong-ho. Kim Yong-chol, the director of the United Front Department that works as a counterpart to the South’s Unification Ministry, is another member.

This, coupled with the elevation of the cross-border affairs agency, might mean Pyongyang will bolster its peace offensive in line with the “task of reunification” that had been laid out by Kim at the party congress, officials said.

“They are apparently trying to prop up diplomacy given the presence of not only Ri Su-yong, a party politburo member, but Ri Yong-ho, who was just a politburo candidate, in the State Affairs Commission,” a Foreign Ministry official said.

“But the committee’s position needs to be watched further because although it did upgrade to a standalone body, the party still holds much bigger sway in the North.”

Kim Yong-hyun, a North Korean studies professor at Dongguk University in Seoul, said the inauguration of the State Affairs Commission could be designed to highlight the communist system’s “flexibility” as the party declared its “normalization” during the congress.  

Cheong Seong-chang, a senior fellow at the Sejong Institute, said the idea of the State Affairs Commission shows Kim’s intention to engage more in not only defense, but also economic, labor, propaganda, inter-Korean and foreign policies.

He pointed to the participation of the prime minister and other related officials who were not members of the National Defense Commission, the longstanding top governing body.

“As for the new inter-Korean affairs agency, it demonstrates the North’s strong resolve to step up its peace offensive toward the South and be more active about bilateral talks,” he said.

“The Park Geun-hye government, for its part, may need to come up with a more flexible yet strategic approach, separating nuclear issues from dialogue, economic and other exchange programs and proactively responding to them.”

On the economic front, the regime appears to “feel burdened” in the face of international sanctions, as it stopped short of mapping out concrete action plans to nail the five-year economic strategy also unveiled at the congress, the Unification Ministry noted.

The assembly mostly reiterated existing conceptual lines of the strategy involving energy, infrastructure, agriculture and light industries without presenting detailed plans or numerical targets during the session.

“It failed to provide a clear motto. There would inevitably be limitations on pursuing self-sufficient growth under the sanctions and without outside investment,” a senior ministry official told reporters on customary condition of anonymity.

By Shin Hyon-hee (heeshin@heraldcorp.com)