North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, has called for a change to the constitution to identify South Korea as the “number one hostile state”, ending the regime’s commitment to unifying the Korean peninsula.
In a speech to the supreme people’s assembly – North Korea’s rubber-stamp parliament – Kim said he no longer believed unification was possible and accused the South of attempting to foment regime change and promote unification by stealth.
In another sign of quickly deteriorating ties between the two Koreas, which ended their 1950-53 war with a truce but not a peace treaty – Kim said: “We don’t want war, but we have no intention of avoiding it.”
The state-run KCNA news agency said on Tuesday that North Korea would close three agencies that oversee unification and inter-Korean tourism: the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification, the National Economic Cooperation Bureau and the Mount Kumgang International Tourism Administration.
“The two most hostile states, which are at war, are now in acute confrontation on the Korean peninsula,” a decision adopted by the assembly said, according to KCNA. “The reunification of Korea can never be achieved with the Republic of Korea”, the official name of South Korea.
Kim’s comments drew immediate condemnation from the South Korean president, Yoon Suk Yeol, who accused Pyongyang of being “anti-national” in labelling the South as a hostile country.
Yoon also condemned North Korea’s recent missile launch and live-fire exercises near the countries’ tense maritime border, warning that provocations would invite retaliation on a “multiplied scale”.
Kim’s speech marks a departure from decades of official policy that saw reconciliation and unification as the ultimate goal, despite frequent rises in tensions on the peninsula.
Some analysts believe that by classifying the South as its biggest adversary, the North could be attempting to justify the use of nuclear weapons in any future war.
Kim said a war would “decimate” South Korea and deal an “unimaginable” defeat to its biggest ally, the US, which has almost 30,000 troops stationed in the country, according to KCNA.
“In the event of war on the Korean peninsula, I think it is also important to reflect on the issue of completely occupying, suppressing, and reclaiming [South Korea] and incorporating it into the territory of our Republic,” Kim said.
The recent deterioration in cross-border ties has caused alarm among some Korea watchers.
In a report published last week on the US-based 38 North project, former state department official Robert Carlin and nuclear scientist Siegfried Hecker said the situation on the Korean peninsula was “more dangerous than it has been at any time since early June 1950”, shortly before the start of the Korean war.
“That may sound overly dramatic, but we believe that, like his grandfather [Kim Il-sung] in 1950, Kim Jong-un has made a strategic decision to go to war.
“We do not know when or how Kim plans to pull the trigger, but the danger is already far beyond the routine warnings in Washington, Seoul and Tokyo about Pyongyang’s ‘provocations.’”
At a meeting of the ruling Workers’ party late last year, Kim Jong-un described North and South Korea as “two states hostile to each other,” the Yonhap news agency said.
