In South Korean society, the prevailing perception had long been that the Central Military Commission of the Korean Workers' Party (KWP CMC), the party's supreme military guidance organ, had become a nominal institution following the rise of the National Defense Commission (NDC), the state organ for defense administration, after the death of Kim Il-sung in 1994. However, at the Third Conference of the Korean Workers' Party held in September 2010, Kim Jong-un, the third son of Kim Jong-il, was appointed Vice Chairman of the KWP CMC. The KWP CMC subsequently became a principal institutional foundation for  Kim Jong Un 's consolidation of control over the military and, more broadly, for the feudalistic hereditary transfer of power across three generations.

Kim Jong-il convened KWP CMC meetings only infrequently, and even those meetings were disclosed only in a limited manner through internal materials at a later date. In the  Kim Jong Un  era, by contrast, KWP CMC meetings have been held as many as four times in a single year, with the fact of convening and the content of the meetings disclosed through the Rodong Sinmun approximately one to two days afterward. Reports of meetings held by the National Defense Commission or its successor, the State Affairs Commission, are by contrast rarely found.

The KWP CMC functions, in peacetime, as an organ that sets forth major military policies, military operational directions toward South Korea, and the direction of defense industry development, and in wartime or contingency situations, as the supreme military command authority capable of directing the operational commanders of the General Staff Department and front-line commands. Nevertheless, the organizational chart of North Korea's military command structure published in the Defense White Paper of the South Korean Ministry of National Defense has consistently omitted the KWP CMC. Furthermore, the National Defense Commission and the State Affairs Commission, which hold no substantive authority over the command of North Korean armed forces, have long been overestimated. Should the South Korean Ministry of National Defense, which must be prepared to conduct military operations against North Korean forces in a contingency, hold such an inaccurate understanding of North Korea's military command structure, this would constitute a matter of serious concern.

The 2022 Defense White Paper published by the Ministry of National Defense describes the KWP CMC as an organ that "discusses and decides on measures to implement the party's military line and policies in accordance with the rules of the Korean Workers' Party, and provides party guidance over defense affairs as a whole." This characterization reflects an understanding of the KWP CMC solely as a party, political, and policy guidance organ over the military, and fails entirely to recognize its character as the supreme military command authority. However, the party rules revised at the Eighth Congress of the Korean Workers' Party in January 2021 explicitly state that "the Central Military Commission of the Party discusses and decides on measures to implement the party's military line and policies, and commands the armed forces of the Republic." Accordingly, the Defense White Paper of the Republic of Korea has failed to accurately account for the KWP CMC's authority to "command" the armed forces.​