(LEAD) N. Korea to hold Supreme People's Assembly meeting on Sept. 7: KCNA

All News 10:35 August 08, 2022

(ATTN: UPDATES throughout with more details; MODIFIES headline; ADDS photo, byline)
By Yi Wonju

SEOUL, Aug. 8 (Yonhap) -- North Korea will convene a key parliamentary meeting in Pyongyang next month to discuss organizational and other pending issues, its state media said Monday.

The standing committee of the Supreme People's Assembly (SPA), the North's rubber-stamp parliament, held a plenary meeting the previous day and decided to open the 7th Session of the 14th SPA on Sept. 7, according to the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).

The upcoming session is to discuss the issue of "adopting the law on the socialist rural development and the law on landscaping and the organizational matter," it added.

The SPA is the highest organ of power under the North's constitution, but it rubber-stamps decisions by the ruling party. It usually holds a plenary session in March or April to deal mainly with the budget and cabinet reshuffles.

Last year, the North held SPA sessions in January and September.

Choe Ryong-hae (C), member of the Presidium of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of North Korea's Workers' Party, presides over a plenary session of the standing committee of the Supreme People's Assembly at the Mansudae Assembly Hall in Pyongyang on Aug. 7, 2022, in this photo released by the official Korean Central News Agency the following day. (For Use Only in the Republic of Korea. No Redistribution) (Yonhap)

Sunday's plenary session was presided over by Choe Ryong-hae, chairman of the standing committee, without leader Kim Jong-un's attendance.

Attendees decided on convening the parliamentary meeting with unanimous approval and had discussions on other issues, including adopting the law on medicines and revising the law on aerospace development, according to the KCNA.

"Revised and supplemented in the law on aerospace development in a detailed way were the basic principle of aerospace development and the norms related to the procedure and method of implementation so as to further legalize the activities of aerospace development," it said.

The North will also hold a national meeting "early in August" to review the country's emergency anti-epidemic measures, the KCNA said in a separate report.

The meeting, expected to take place before Aug. 15, draws attention to whether the North will announce an end to the coronavirus crisis or unveil changes to the antivirus regulations as its new suspected COVID-19 cases have remained at zero since July 29.

Pyongyang disclosed its first COVID-19 case on May 12 after having claimed to be coronavirus-free for over two years and immediately declared a "maximum emergency" virus control system. The North's daily fever tally peaked at over 392,920 on May 15.