North Korea’s recent electoral reform introducing a primary-like competition between two candidates is “far from” an actual democratic move to guarantee suffrage, Seoul’s unification ministry said on Friday.

The DPRK’s rubber-stamp parliament amended and supplemented the election law this summer, and a recent series of articles published by cabinet-run newspaper Minju Choson explained that certain districts will implement the primary-like competition to decide who will run in the single-candidate main election, rather than the party nominating a single individual.