North Korea’s party charter drops “peaceful unification” language and expands Kim Jong Un’s powers

Newly public text of North Korea’s ruling Workers’ Party charter shows that Pyongyang has formally stripped out language about “peaceful unification” with South Korea while expanding the enumerated powers of party leader Kim Jong Un, according to a South Korean research briefing reported Thursday by Yonhap.

The disclosure matters because it shows, in the ruling party’s own rules, how North Korea has codified a break with decades of reunification rhetoric and tightened Kim’s personal authority at the center of the system. The Workers’ Party of Korea is the country’s core political institution, shaping ideology, personnel decisions and the wider state apparatus.

A full text of the revised charter was made public in Seoul on Sept. 3 through a briefing by South Korea’s Institute for National Security Strategy, a think tank affiliated with the country’s intelligence community. Yonhap, citing the institute’s analysis, said the revised charter omits references to “peaceful unification” and other reunification-related language, including phrases such as “peaceful reunification of the fatherland” and “great national unity.”

Yonhap also said the new text removes references to the U.S. military presence in South Korea and to “outside forces,” part of a broader deletion of language that had tied the two Koreas together in the party’s stated mission.

The revision goes beyond inter-Korean policy. According to Yonhap’s account of the institute’s findings, the charter now spells out broader powers for the party general secretary, a post held by Kim. Those authorities include convening meetings, appointing and dismissing officials, expelling party members and dissolving party departments.

The revised preamble also downplays or removes references to the achievements of Kim’s father and grandfather, former leaders Kim Jong Il and Kim Il Sung, Yonhap reported, citing the institute. The think tank interpreted that as reinforcing Kim Jong Un as the singular leader of the party. It described the broader shift as institutionalizing the “Kim Jong-un Era 2.0.”

The newly released text incorporates updates adopted at the Workers’ Party’s 9th Party Congress in February 2026. Yonhap said South Korean intelligence had previously reported that the charter was revised in June 2024, but Thursday’s disclosure was the first public release of the full text, including the 2026 changes.

The institute said the revisions “finaliz[e] the reorganization of its governing norms, consisting of the Party Charter, the Constitution, and the Ten Principles, taking the 9th Party Congress as an opportunity,” according to Yonhap. In North Korea, those party and state rules serve as key statements of ideology and authority.

Other newly reported provisions point to a wider restructuring of party discipline and organization. Yonhap said the charter allows the party to skip internal elections during wartime, raises the minimum membership age from 18 to 20, and adds five major lines of party building: political, organizational, ideological, disciplinary and stylistic.

The changes fit a shift Kim publicly set out in January 2024, when he called for North Korea to abandon longstanding constitutional language on reunification and redefine relations with the South as those of hostile states. In a Jan. 15, 2024, speech to the Supreme People’s Assembly, North Korea’s rubber-stamp legislature, Kim said “it is necessary to delete such expressions in the constitution as ‘northern half’ and ‘independence, peaceful reunification and great national unity’.”

Constitutional changes in late 2024 and 2025 had already pointed in that direction. The newly public party charter now shows the same break written directly into the rules of the institution that governs North Korea.