North Korea today convened a session of parliament on January 17 to debate a proposed law that aims to combat the cultural influence of the South.
The North Korean Supreme People’s Congress will debate a bill “on the protection of the Pyongyang cultural dialect”, seen as a new attempt to prevent the entry of foreign influences in the isolated country, indicated the official North Korean news agency, KCNA.
Since the beginning of the covid-19 pandemic, the regime has already warned against the use of foreign words, in reference to the Korean spoken in the South and to which North Koreans have access through audiovisual content smuggled into the country.
The Supreme People’s Assembly will also review the execution of this year’s state budget, approve the 2023 budget and discuss laws related to the work of the North Korean Attorney General’s Office.
The convening of a parliamentary session was unanimously decided on Tuesday by the standing committee of the Supreme People’s Assembly, at a meeting in Pyongyang, at which leader Kim Jong-un was not present.
The Supreme People’s Assembly, whose role is to approve the decisions of the regime’s leadership, used to hold just one session a year, usually in April, mainly to deal with budgets and organizational issues.
In its last session, the Supreme People’s Assembly approved a law authorizing the launching of attacks with nuclear weapons and declaring the country’s status as a nuclear power irreversible.
The convening of the parliamentary session comes at a time of great tension on the Korean peninsula.
North Korea said on Tuesday it had ordered the armed forces to carry out artillery fire in the coastal zone for the second consecutive day, in response to live-fire drills from the South near the border.
South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said Monday’s projectiles hit north of the buffer zone, created in 2018 as part of an agreement between the two Koreas to reduce military tensions.
Japan and South Korea on Friday announced new sanctions against North Korea in response to Pyongyang’s stepping up missile tests.
Seoul said the sanctions affect eight individuals and seven companies linked to acquisition operations for the development of weapons of mass destruction, according to a note from the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Pyongyang carried out a record number of missile tests in November in response to joint military maneuvers by Seoul and Washington, giving rise to a dangerous escalation on the Korean peninsula.
According to satellite images, it is possible that the North Korean regime will soon carry out a new nuclear test, for which it has been prepared for several months.
*With Lusa
