Following a number of recent changes to its maritime and trade law, North Korea is revamping its laws on intellectual property (IP). The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) received the most recent version of the North Korean patent law in Korean and English in Aug. 2021 or before, changes that Kim Jong Un’s government apparently adopted early last year.

The new IP laws introduce several modifications, adding four articles and amending most others. Words or phrases were replaced, but in most cases this appears to be purely linguistic variants instead of hard legal differences. References to “technology