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My understanding is that voting in the DPRK happens as an "approval ballot" where ballots come pre-filled with a single name for every position. Voters can either cast their vote directly, or cross off one of the names before casting the vote. At least in theory, these %0.07 percent of votes that don't go to Kim represent voters who crossed of Kim's name before casting their ballot. There's defector testimony that these modified ballots go into a separate ballot box, and votes are cast simultaneously by everyone in your neighborhood, and so this is an obviously public act of defiance.
The real politics in the DPRK happens in determining who gets put on the ballot. The Worker's Party of Korea is in charge of preparing the ballots and selecting candidates. My understanding is that low-level candidates are determined by a process that would be viewed as more-or-less democratic by Western standards, you just have to be a member of the party to have a "vote" in the "primary" that determines who goes on the main ballot. About 10% of the population are members of the WPK. Being a member of the WPK is relatively prestigious socially and hard to do. I've mentioned here before that I used to teach in the DPRK, and I had a few students explicitly mentioned to me that their number 1 career goal was getting into the party.
There are two other legal political parties in North Korea, and they both get some number of seats in local and nation-level elections (maybe 5% between the two of them). The Chindoist Chongu Party is more or less an anti-Christian party, and the Korean Social Democratic Party is more or less what you'd guess from the title. They've historically had more independence than I would have naively guessed (which is not a lot---they are legally bound to be subservient to the WPK---but past party pamphlets would occasionally have remarks in them directly criticizing national level policies and human rights abuses). I never heard anyone talk about these parties while I was over there, though, and I have long wondered what type of person joins one of these parties instead of the WPK/how it affects their social standing.
The main way we know these things is by people going and visiting North Korea and interacting with "ordinary" North Koreans. But Trump in 2017 passed an executive order that Americans cannot travel there. I think this was a huge mistake because now we have even less insight into this already opaque country.
I've never deeply understood how this works (I respect that it does) because in my jurisdiction, my party membership for the purposes of attending the local convention is entirely decided by which primary ballot I select at election time. I guess I could separately join and pay dues, but in the US I've never even heard of the idea that a party would reject someone from membership.
Very different worlds.
I think of being a member of the WPK as being equivalent to citizenship in the US. Once you're a member of of the WPK, you get a "meaningful" vote, can get a passport, and get all the other legal benefits that we give to citizens.
One of the reasons I'm against serve-your-country-for-citizenship-starship-troopers-style is that North Korea style governance seems like the only possible end result.
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