Why does autocratic North Korea hold elections? It’s not merely a political ruse.

In a country ruled by a Party that sits above the nation’s constitution and laws, elections to the DPRK Supreme People’s Assembly are not based on the process of voting, and more akin to a declaration from above. But the upcoming assembly elections hide an even more sinister reality.

The DPRK Supreme People’s Assembly (SPA) will hold its 13th election on March 9, announced North Korea’s state news agency KCNA on January 8.

On a strictly technical level, these elections are comparable to the voting process for representative politicians in other nations. In reality, North Korea’s SPA elections have nothing to do with voting as it is understood by the outside world. The North Korean state requires all citizens of 18 years and older to ‘vote’ in the affirmative for the candidates declared on the ballot.

The point is, despite North Korea describing the event as an ‘election’, it is not for North Korean citizens such a thing in any sense – it is nothing even like a mock election or a rigged election. An election is a process in which the voter elects a public official with their ballot. In elections, there is a nominal choice between consent and dissent, whether this is purely symbolic, has been forced, or the results manipulated after the event.

In a North Korean election, there is no possibility of abstaining or casting a ‘no’ vote. To do so is considered a subversive act against the will of the state that is beyond the pale and results in destruction of the dissenter’s family. In fact, expressing approval of a state ratified decision is the North Korean voter’s obligation and right.

When North Korean voters turn up at the polls on the day of the election, the ballots are distributed by citizens forcibly mobilised by the state. Voters have their identification papers checked against the electoral register. They are then given a ballot with only the candidate’s name and one box in which to tick the voter’s approval. It is the North Korean citizen’s privilege to endorse a decision set by their leadership.

As the election date approaches, streets and towns in North Korea see commotion, as promotion of the election atmosphere is ramped up. The election is conducted not through institutions or workplaces, but through residential units. Days before the election, each residential district hangs a photo of its candidate and below it, the electoral register.

Just because all voters endorse the state’s decision does not necessarily entail that they are endorsing it actively. North Korean voters generally have no interest in who their candidate is as many already live their lives apart from the state, and don’t bother to find out the name of the person they have just ‘voted’ into office. Nevertheless, voters dare not declare their dissent for fear of being accused of treason. In this way, the election itself is about going through the motions.

However, there lurk real and sinister dangers in the run up to an election period. In the month before elections, state security and surveillance agents visit the homes of registered voters to verify their residential status and track citizens’ whereabouts, making sure that they are where they should be.

In the days before an election, residents may apply for an exemption from their neighbourhood surveillance officer in the case of emergency, such as the need to look after elderly parents in a critical condition and verified as living in another residential area. This permits citizens to receive a transfer ballot, with which they may cast their vote in a different district. This is also the time when families with members whose whereabouts cannot be accounted for begin to worry.

At any other point in the year, family members of missing persons can get away with lying or bribing surveillance agents, saying that the person they are looking for is trading in another district’s market. But it is during an election period that a North Korean individual’s escape to China or South Korea becomes exposed.

There is much more to this election, which takes place once every five years, than politics or propaganda: it is the occasion on which the North Korean state conducts a comprehensive crackdown on missing individuals.

The number of ‘missing’ persons began to snowball around 20 years ago. During the ‘Arduous March’ of the mid 90s, when North Koreans suffered mass famine, many living in inland provinces escaped from their designated residential areas to seek survival opportunities elsewhere. The exact number of those who starved to death during this time is difficult to establish, not least because it was impossible to identify the dead bodies that constantly piled up near train stations and rivers.

As the North Korean state collected the bodies in trucks and transported them to the hills to bury en masse, it exacerbated the confusion of surveillance and security agents in their record-keeping. Although agents continued to receive daily reports from residential surveillance officers, sometimes not even the family members of the missing persons themselves could confirm whether their loved one was dead or alive.

Moreover, those who know that someone in their family has safely made it to China will keep the knowledge secret, because anyone who leaves North Korea is labeled as “a traitor of the people” by the ruling Party. Even when surveillance agents drop in on the homes of missing persons and interrogate family members about their whereabouts, they will stand up to the agents and hold their ground, maintaining that they are out to trade and have not yet returned.

In the mid-2000s, state surveillance and security agents turned to tactics of persuasion rather than confrontation alone. They requested families to give up information about missing persons by saying that they knew the person was in China, but that if he or she returned to North Korea to vote in the next election, all would be forgiven by the Workers’ Party. There were threats too: if the missing person did not return for the election, the treacherous penalty of abandoning the homeland would be paid by the remaining family members.

North Korean refugee Kim* was hiding in China in 2006 when he received a message from his family in Hyesan: “You will be forgiven by the Party if you come and vote in this election. If you don’t return, we will be banished from the city.” On the same day that he received the message, he crossed the Yalu River from China to head back to North Korea.

While he and his family escaped formal punishment upon his return home, he was blackmailed into spreading the message that China was a terrible place and that North Korea was a much better place to live. Within six months, he succeeded in escaping again to China and has not been back to North Korea since.

The upcoming Supreme People’s Assembly elections in North Korea are the first since Kim Jong-il’s death, and also the first fully-fledged and nationwide surveillance operation since Kim Jong-un came to power. After any North Korean election, the same article is published by the state media: all the citizens of North Korea have cast their votes of assent, it will say – even though the number of absentees who leave their ballots unmarked continues to rise.