Kim Jong-un was not on the list of candidates elected to the North Korean parliament. Photo / Getty Images
Kim Jong-un was not on the list of candidates elected to the North Korean parliament. Photo / Getty Images
Kim Jong-un was not on the list of 687 candidates elected to the North Korean parliament in Sunday's election, state media announced on Tuesday, although his sister was voted into the rubber-stamp parliament.
No reason has been given for Kim's absence from the ballot, five years after he was elected in the previous vote as head of the Workers' Party of Korea.
Every candidate who did run in the election was returned with 100 per cent of the vote in their constituencies, including Kim Yo-jung, Kim's younger sister, who previously worked in the government's propaganda division but has more recently taken on the management of his day-to-day schedule.
"North Korean elections have no meaning anyway, but this is designed to show that Kim feels himself to be above those who were elected", said Toshimitsu Shigemura, a professor who specialises in North Korea's leadership at Tokyo's Waseda University.
"He is telling the nation that he is not on the same level as the rest of the party and it is effectively beneath him to go through the election process", he added. "This will not affect his control on the party or the nation, but it is meant to show that he's a better leader than his own father and Kim Il-sung, his grandfather and the founder of North Korea".
Rah Jong-yil, a former head of South Korean intelligence charged with monitoring the North, echoed that assessment.
"Kim apparently does not consider it necessary for himself to be elected, but he is the head of state so he will still be in parliament and make all the decisions, which means the entire election is a joke.
"It's all for the facade of legitimacy and this will change nothing in the way the country is run or the leadership's policies".
An electoral worker shows a ballot during the election at a polling station in Pyongyang, North Korea. Photo / AP
Fully 99.99 per cent of all eligible voters had exercised their democratic right to select their leaders, KCNA reported, with citizens serving at sea excused the obligation to vote.
The results of the election were never in any doubt - each ballot paper only has one name and anyone who wants to vote against the approved candidate has to enter a special booth and put a cross through the name. But defectors say that Kim's standing has been damaged by his failure to win concessions on sanctions on the regime at the recent Hanoi summit with President Donald Trump.
"Mr Kim expected a lot from this summit", said Lee Ae-ran, who fled North Korea with her family in 1997 but retains contacts there as president of The Centre for Liberty and Reunification.
"It was more than simply relief from the sanctions; he believed a victory in Hanoi would earn him more support from the people, enabling him to tighten his control over the nation even more".
And while discontent was never going to be reflected in Sunday's election, Lee says it is not far beneath the surface.
"The sanctions are causing the economic devastation to spread in the North and people are struggling to overcome the terrible shortage of food", she told The Telegraph. "I believe the grudges they hold towards Kim could worsen and possibly even explode.
"Any rupture could be lethal to Kim Jong-un and his regime", she added.
Lee said the North Korean dictator will use the election to "replace the 'older generation', who were loyal to his father, with his own group of flatterers", but she believes the resentment will inevitably deepen.
"If the people in the North can continue to build stronger connections with the outside world and complaints against the party and the leadership continue to grow, then the people will realise that they can escape from the abuse that they are presently suffering at the hands of their own leaders", she said.
Jiro Ishimaru, chief editor of AsiaPress, said his network of "citizen reporters" in North Korea is saying that there is "extreme disappointment" at the failure of the Hanoi summit, which the regime had indicated would be a victory for Kim that would see sanctions quickly lifted.
