North Korea says it is no longer interested in reunifying with the South
North Korea's approach to South Korea has undergone major changes in recent decades. While the South has often been called its 'sworn' and 'main enemy' threatened to 'destroy' it with nuclear weapons, which it sometimes does dialogue and discussed a possible reunion.
But according to state media reports on Tuesday, North Korea has formally abandoned peaceful reunification as a key policy goal. Announcing the drastic change, the North's leader, Kim Jong Un, said the North no longer sees the South as “the partner of reconciliation and reunification” but instead as an enemy who, if necessary, must be subdued through nuclear war.
In recent decades, the reunification of the two Koreas has become increasingly unlikely as the economic gap between them widened and mutual enmity deepened.
Mr. Kim unveiled his new stance on South Korea at a party meeting late last month and in a speech to the North's parliament, the Supreme People's Assembly, on Monday.
He also ordered the revision of the North's constitution, as well as its propaganda guidelines, to remove references to “peaceful reunification,” “great national unity” or to South Koreans as “compatriots” and to instill in its people the view that the South was 'a foreign country' and 'the most hostile state'.
“We can specify in our Constitution the issue of fully occupying, subduing and reclaiming the ROK and annexing it as part of the territory of our republic in case a war breaks out on the Korean Peninsula,” Mr. Kim said, using the abbreviation of the South's official name, the Republic of Korea.
He has been working on his new policy in recent months, criticizing the deepening of South Korea's military alliance with Washington under conservative President Yoon Suk Yeol. Mr. Kim called the expansion of joint military exercises between the allies a dangerous provocation and called it a justification for producing more nuclear weapons and threatening to use them against the South.
“We don't want war, but we don't intend to avoid it either,” he said. “If the enemies unleash a war, our republic will resolutely punish the enemies by mobilizing all its military forces, including nuclear weapons.”
The North Korean parliament backed Kim's new policies and dismantled all government agencies charged with promoting exchanges with the South, state media said. The North has also shut down radio broadcasts and propaganda websites promoting Korean reunification in the past week, according to South Korean officials. Mr Kim also ordered the removal of propaganda monuments dedicated to the same cause
On Tuesday, South Korean leader Yoon criticized Kim's new policies as “anti-nation” and “anti-history.”
The Korean Peninsula was divided into the pro-Soviet north and the pro-American south at the end of World War II. The two Koreas fought the Korean War from 1950 to 1953, which ended in an armistice, technically leaving the two nations in a perpetual state of war. Although they have since repeatedly accused each other of plotting an invasion, both sides called for peaceful reunification – until Mr Kim changed his policy.
“If the North provokes, we will demand frequent retaliation,” Mr Yoon said on Tuesday in response to Mr Kim's speech. “The threat to us to 'choose between war and peace' will no longer work.”
Mr. Kim has signaled a major policy shift since his direct diplomacy with former President Donald J. Trump collapsed in 2019 without an agreement on rolling back the North's nuclear weapons program or lifting international sanctions imposed on the North. Since then, he has shunned dialogue with Washington and has also expressed deep distrust of both the liberals of the Southwho had mediated talks between him and Mr Trump, and the current conservative administration, which has called Pyongyang “an enemy” and warned of a “end of the regime” if it uses nuclear weapons.
Instead, Mr. Kim doubled his profits to expand his country's nuclear capabilities.
The shift from the North's policy to peaceful reunification was an extension of the new diplomatic strategy, analysts said
“The North has faced self-contradiction when it threatened to target and use its nuclear weapons against fellow countrymen,” said Hong Min, a senior analyst at the Korea Institute for National Unification in Seoul. “That contradiction is resolved when the North abandons the idea of South-North reunification and defines the South as a hostile state with which it had no diplomatic ties and was in a state of war.”