North Korea's rubber-stamp Parliament meets amid global coronavirus pandemic

SEOUL (REUTERS, AFP) - North Korea's rubber-stamp Parliament gathered on Sunday (April 12), a day after leader Kim Jong Un presided over a ruling party politburo meeting where he called for strict measures to prevent an outbreak of the new coronavirus.

Photos released by state news agency KCNA on Monday showed hundreds of lawmakers sitting in close proximity to one another with no masks or other visible anti-infection measures.

North Korea has said it has tested at least 700 people and has put more than 500 in quarantine, but has no confirmed cases of the new coronavirus, the World Health Organisation (WHO) told Reuters last week.

"The state emergency anti-epidemic campaign will continue to be intensified to prevent the spread of Covid-19, with a priority given to the life and safety of the people," said a report submitted to the Supreme People's Assembly (SPA), according to KCNA.

North Korea took swift steps to prevent the spread of the virus, including blocking nearly all travel with neighbouring China and Russia, suspending international tourism and imposing long quarantines on thousands of people, including foreign diplomats.

The SPA meeting came a day after leader Mr Kim called for "more thorough state measures" to protect citizens from the fast-spreading coronavirus.

The supreme assembly meets once a year to adopt the state budget and to exercise its constitutional mandate to approve key appointments and legal amendments, though Mr Kim holds near absolute power in the country.

Personnel changes also take place in the meeting, with more than a third of the State Affairs Commission's (SAC) members replaced.

Mr Kim is chairman of the SAC - the North's highest decision-making body - and five of its 13 other members were replaced, reported KCNA.

"This is a rather large scale of SAC membership reshuffle," said former US government North Korea analyst Rachel Lee.

Mr Ri Son Gwon, a former defence commander who was promoted to foreign affairs minister earlier this year, was one of the newly appointed as members of the Cabinet and the SAC in the assembly.

A former foreign minister, Mr Ri Su Yong, taken off the committee.

The SPA was initially scheduled for last Friday, but was postponed without explanation.

Under Kim the North has made rapid progress on its nuclear arsenal, launching missiles capable of reaching the whole of the US mainland, and has been subject to increasingly stringent UN Security Council sanctions as a result.

Talks with the US have been largely deadlocked since the collapse of the Hanoi summit last year over sanctions relief and what the North would be willing to give up in exchange.

A budgetary report submitted to the SPA said 15.9 per cent of state spending this year would be devoted to defence, KCNA said, a marginal increase on 2019.

The Cabinet report acknowledged that "serious mistakes" were found in its work last year.

"They taught a serious lesson that if the officials in charge of providing economic guidance fail to fulfil their duty," the authorities' economic goals will not be achieved, it said.

North Korea "apparently wants to show its institutions are working and national safety is under control, while trying to lower public expectations about the economy by blaming the ongoing global pandemic," Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha University in Seoul, told AFP.