N. Korea's revised constitution defines territory, drops unification references

Yes, it's the "normal state" thesis that is popular in Seoul. I feel it's somewhat true, they keep removing obvious socialist namings, like they renamed the socialist constitution into the constitution, the chairman of state affairs commission ino the president of state affairs, the people's hospital into county hospital, the cooperative farm into the farm. However, the preamble is allowed to be weird, it reflects domestic legitimacy structure and national mythology. Vietnam still worships Ho Chi Minh a lot, Soviet Union mentioned Lenin in its preamble. Many Asian, African, and Latin American constitutions and their preambles have their own unique features that reflect their unique history. Kim Il Sung, for all his record, was a guerilla leader in Manchuria and the person who made North Korea what it is. He is repsonibl for the war, collectivization, industrialization, investment into infrastructure and social services, national identity and mythology, and shaped the lives of everyone. Removing him is extraordinary. Maybe leaving a small mention would be enough if they tried to look like a normal state, but removing means something else is happening.

The presidential republic in the post Soviet Union is partial evolution of the unique system peculiar to communist countries, where the ruling party was itself an administrative apparatus that dominated the state. The post Soviet states had faced ideological collapse which meant the ruling communist party as an institution was illegtimate, but its elites and bureaucracies remained, so the whole system of government was restructured from nominally parliamentarian to a president. The president is the supreme leader (and his baseline power is stronger than general Secretary, even if both depend on allies in bureaucracy) who presides over the bureaucracy itself, without oversight from anywhere. The process was pioneered by Gorbachev, who wanted to transform power system to be directly accountable to the pugli, initiating the American system. However, the first person who actually thought something like that was Stalin. During most of Stalin reign, the communist party was the dominant buraucracy, and the formal government was the chief economic office (this structure continues to exist in China, Vietnam, and North Korea), however in the 1950s party media started to invert the usual order of Naming - not the party and then the government, but the government and then the party. This was as a significant by contemporaries and some indications exist that Stalin planned a reform that would do something similar, where real power would be transfered to the formal government and the party will remain as propaganda and recruitment machine What it means for North Korea? It's impossible to predict, but over the last 9 years Kim Jong Un has paid serious attention to try to remake North Korean political system so it can do more than just repress and protect the hierarchy of power. This arrangement can privilege economic policy bureaucracy against the party bureaucracy and security bureaucracy, which means the state as a whole will focus more on administration and development to secure its long term legitimacy and stability, rather than just riding on the inherited myth of the Kim Il Sung Revolution and jailing anyone who thinks otherwise. It's quite interesting the Ministry of State Security (North Korean KGB) has been renamed the State Intelligence Bureau, signalling its orientation from domestic security to foreign inrellgien, and now he reforms the Ministry of Public Security into the Police, possibly absorbing more domestic security roles, becoming something similar to the Chinese and Vietnamese police, that do most of political repression.

I feel North Korea is coming close to a Hegelian sublation. North Korea is caught between two impossible paths, and the only choice is to do something that is both and neither at the same time. North Korea will stop being North Korea and will continue to be North Korea. Kim Jong Un is the historical actor that drives it, but not who originates it. Ultimately the ultimate source of that movement is the human being (as a general category, not particular individuals or political class), who refuses stagnation and structural entrapment and transforms everything around themselves.

They already recognized them. They insist all future communications should go through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. They refer to South Korea by their official name, and refer to their government by their official name. What they didn't outline was the maritime border, because they have their ambitions there