North Korea’s rubber-stamp parliament passed a new law on “protecting” the country’s language from what authorities see as threatening foreign influence, as it met for an annual full session to discuss state budget measures this week.

According to the Rodong Sinmun, the Supreme People’s Assembly (SPA) also decided to maintain high levels of defense and COVID-19 prevention spending, while speakers from various sectors boasted of last year’s success and lamented agriculture and production failures.

As in the past, Thursday’s state media coverage did not include monetary spending figures and instead only offered percentages comparing sectoral spending to previous and