The Democratic People's Republic of Korea, since its founding -- by the "eternal president" Kim Il-sung -- has had two constitutions and two amendments to the latter dating 1948, 1972, 1992 and 1998 respectively. The current constitution was adopted on 1998-09-05 by the first session of the Supreme People's Assembly.
The information on the North Korean constitution is by and large scattered and sometimes inconsistent. I have done my best to gather all the information, however I was unable to find the full texts 1972 and 1992 constitutions. Below are plaintext, non-word wrapped (indefinite columns) and word wrapped (80 coulmns) full texts of the 1948 and 1998 constitutions.
From what I understand, the 1972, 1992 and 1998 texts are all considered one constitution -- the 1972 one -- with amendments from 1992 and 1998, while the 1948 constitution is a seperate text. All the texts share distinct similarities, however, and a lot of the stuff even between the 1948 and 1998 texts are identical.
The texts are official translations from the government of the DPRK. There are unofficial translations -- mainly from South Korea -- but they are prone to potential misinterpretation and seem to be of lower quality in general, so the official sources are used. I have reformatted a fair bit of the text and fixed typing errors (but not spelling mistakes, poor grammar, etc.) for the sake of clarity.
Should you find any errors or missing texts (in particular, the 1972 and
1992 texts) or have any other suggestions, contact me via .
Constitution of the Democratic People's Republic of
Korea (1948)
Constitution of the Democratic People's Republic of
Korea (1948) (80 columns)
Constitution of the Democratic People's Republic of
Korea (1998)
Constitution of the Democratic People's Republic of
Korea (1998) (80 columns)