SEOUL: North Korea’s Supreme People’s Assembly, the isolated state’s decision-making rubber-stamp parliament, will hold a meeting on April 11, the North’s Central News Agency said on Thursday.
The decision to hold the rare meeting, which will be the first this year, had been made by the assembly’s presidium on March 15, the report said without elaborating.
The North’s parliament usually serves to approve decisions on issues such as governing structures and budgets that have been created by the state’s powerful Workers’ Party, members of which form the vast majority of the assembly.
The Supreme People’s Assembly convenes once or twice a year for day-long meetings and the last time it held a meeting was in April last year, when it announced the formation of a diplomatic commission aimed at improving international relations.
It was not specified in Thursday’s report whether North Korean leader Kim Jong Un would attend the meeting in April.
Next month’s assembly will come against a backdrop of diplomatic activity taking place to engage North Korea and as South Korean officials prepare for an inter-Korean summit to take place late April.
Kim Jong Un is also due to meet with U.S. President Donald Trump in May after South Korean officials relayed a message from Pyongyang that the North Korean leader wished to speak to Trump about denuclearisation.
The detente with the North which began in January came after a year of numerous missile launches and Pyongyang’s biggest ever nuclear test, accompanied by an exchange of insults and threats between Kim and Trump which fuelled tensions further.--REUTERS