최근 북한 사회보장법제의 변화와 남북협력 대비 법적 과제 - 북한 헌법과 사회보험 및 사회보장법 분석을 중심으로 -

This study examines the recent consolidation of North Korea’s social security legislation since the 2020s, focusing on its normative structure and legal character through an analysis of the Socialist Constitution and the 2021 Law on Social Insurance and Social Security, and derives implications for legal design in the context of inter-Korean cooperation and future legal integration. While the Socialist Constitution repeatedly declares the state’s obligation to guarantee material and cultural well-being, universal free medical care, and material assistance to persons who have lost their ability to work, the elderly without caregivers, and children, it does not systematize social security as an independent fundamental right, nor does it clearly establish, at the constitutional level, the requirements, scope, and remedial procedures associated with individual entitlement to benefits. Accordingly, this study adopts as its analytical framework the question of whether social security norms operate as a system of rights protection or function primarily as a governing distributive order through which the state organizes and allocates benefits. Legal developments under the Kim Jong-un regime are characterized less by a qualitative transformation at the constitutional level than by legislative integration and structural consolidation across sectoral laws, linking previously fragmented regulatory domains such as social security, public health, epidemic control, and labor administration. In particular, the Law on Social Insurance and Social Security integrates social insurance and social security within a unified statutory framework and institutionalizes mechanisms for contribution collection, benefit disbursement, medical assessment of work incapacity, and administrative supervision and sanctions, thereby incorporating social security more deeply into the state’s administrative and fiscal control structure. However, because key elements—including eligibility criteria and benefit levels—are largely delegated to administrative determination, and because systematic appeal and remedial mechanisms remain underdeveloped, the system exhibits stronger characteristics as a regulatory framework of state-controlled allocation rather than as a rights-based entitlement regime. Furthermore, the legal framework governing special economic zones demonstrates that social security norms are subject to functional modification and restriction in accordance with the regulatory objectives of special administrative regimes. Consequently, legal design for inter-Korean cooperation and future integration should not assume the existence of rights-based social security entitlements in North Korea, but instead should proceed through a staged and functional approach centered on establishing minimum social security standards and institutionalized cooperative administrative mechanisms. By reconstructing North Korea’s social security system from the perspective of normative structure and governance function rather than formal rights protection, this study elucidates the systemic implications of recent legislative developments and identifies key legal policy considerations for future cooperation and integration.