North Korea lawmakers leave without reform

The North Korean Parliament adjourned Tuesday without announcing a package of agricultural reforms that had been anticipated, outsider observers noted. In a session that lasted less than a month, legislators approved only a compulsory 12-year education system and personnel decisions, Yonhap News Agency reported. North Korea currently requires students to attend school for 11 years. Reforms to the country's agricultural policies to increase farm production and cut rising food prices had been expected by domestic and foreign media to be at the center of the assembly's focus. The North could announce the results of the reforms after completing an overall assessment to avoid the embarrassment of a failed program, said a South Korean government official. A botched 2002 reform drive was only announced later by a pro-North Korean newspaper in Japan, the official said.