This April 2018 photo shows North Korean leader Kim Jong-un preparing to write in a guestbook with his sister, Kim Yo-jong, in the Peace House at the Truce Village of Panmunjom inside the Demilitarized Zone. Korea Times file

By Jung Da-min

North Korea's major diplomatic figures have been elected as new parliamentary members, while its leader Kim Jong-un did not run in the election.

The list of members elected to the 14th Supreme People's Assembly (SPA) was announced on the sate-run Korean Central Television broadcast, Tuesday afternoon, two days after a nationwide election. A total of 678 deputies have been elected, one from each constituency.

Kim Yo-jong, Kim Jong-un's sister and first director of the Workers' Party of Korea (WPK), was elected to constituency No. 5 in the capital Pyongyang's Mangyongdae district, which is considered the home neighborhood of the country's founder, Kim Il-sung.

Kim Yo-jong has been assisting her brother on the country's diplomatic stage with South Korea as well as with the U.S., receiving the spotlight for waiting on her brother hand and foot.

The North's Foreign Minister Ri Yong-ho and Vice Foreign Minister Choe Son-hui, who played an active part behind the scenes of the Hanoi summit between Kim Jong-un and U.S. President Donald Trump, were elected as SPA members for the first time.

Other diplomatic figures newly elected to the SPA included Ri Su-yong and Kim Yong-chol, vice chairmen of the WPK central committee, as well as North Korea's ambassador to the United States Kim Song, and Ri Son-gwon, chairman of the North's Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland.

Kim Yo-jong has been elected in Constituency No. 5 in the capital Pyongyang's Mangyongdae district, said to be the home neighborhood of the country's founder Kim Il-sung. KCTV-Yonhap