The laws in this database were included in an app called “조선민주주의인민공화국 버저,” which was installed in a North Korean smartphone that was sold in 2024. A number of those laws and updates have never been published outside of North Korea.
For other laws, we recommend readers consult the excellent bi-annual compendium of North Korean laws published by South Korea’s National Intelligence Service, “北韓法令集“. Updated laws are also available in the Unification Legislation Database, 통일법제데이터베이스, maintained by South Korea’s Ministry of Unification, Ministry of Justice, and the Ministry of Government Legislation and English translations are posted on the Law and North Korea site of Australian barrister Daye Gang.
Caveats:
It was not possible to directly export the text of the laws electronically from the phone, so screenshots were taken and ran through a character recognition system to get it back into a form that can be published. The resulting text has not been checked for accuracy, and it is possible the character recognition system might have “corrected” some North Korean spellings to South Korean spellings as part of its error correction. If you have questions about a particular article or phrase used and would like to see the original, please contact us.
Each law is accompanied by a machine translation into English, produced by the May 2025 version of Microsoft Copilot. The English version is provided for the convenience of readers, and no guarantee is made for its precision.
Updates:
July 17, 2025: Added Electricity Law 전력법, State Budget Review Law 국가예산수입법, Socialist Property Management Law 사회주의재산관리법, Price Law 가격법, Grain Administration Law 량정법, Agricultural Law 농업법, Facility Management Law 설비관리법 and Farm Law 농장법. (Translations provided by July 2025 version of Microsoft Copilot)
September 20, 2025: Added Electronic Payments Law 전자결제법
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