North Korea

Constitution on the 8th, republic on the 9th

The first Supreme People's Assembly had convened in Pyongyang on 2 September 1948 and adopted a DPRK constitution on the 8th. On 9 September it proclaimed the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

The same session organized the government as the state's supreme executive organ and installed Kim Il Sung as premier — head of government, not president. A DPRK presidency was not created until 1972.

Kim Tu-bong chaired the assembly's Standing Committee, the office that performed many head-of-state functions under the 1948 structure.

A claim wider than its control

Effective control was confined to the Soviet-occupied north, but the new DPRK claimed jurisdiction over the whole Korean Peninsula rather than declaring itself the government of the northern half.

Of its claimed 572 deputies, 212 came from the north and 360 were purportedly selected through underground voting in the south. That clandestine selection cannot be treated as an independently verified election.

Twenty-five days after Seoul

The proclamation completed the creation of a second Korean government. The Republic of Korea had been proclaimed in Seoul on 15 August 1948 — not simultaneously, but 25 days earlier.

The peninsula now had two rival governments, each presenting itself as the government of Korea as a whole.

The present Workers' Party of Korea did not yet exist under that name; it was formed by a merger in 1949.