North Korean leader Kim Jong Un claims that unification with South Korea is no longer conceivable and that the constitution should be amended to designate it as the “principal enemy”.
Kim also announced that three reunion organisations would cease operations, according to state media KCNA.
South Korea’s President stated that it will reply “multiple times stronger” to any provocation by the North.
The two Koreas have been divided since the Korean War ended in 1953.
They did not sign a peace treaty and therefore have remained technically still at war ever since
Kim stated in a speech to North Korea’s rubber-stamp parliament, the Supreme People’s Assembly, that the constitution should be modified to teach North Koreans that South Korea is a “primary foe and invariable principal enemy.”
He also stated that if a war breaks out on the Korean peninsula, the country’s constitution should address the problem of “occupying”, “recapturing”, and “incorporating” the South into its territory.
Kim who replaced his father, Kim Jong-il, as North Korean leader in 2011, said the North “did not want war, but we also have no intention of avoiding it”, according to KCNA.
He said he was taking a “new stand” on North-South relations, which included dismantling all organisations tasked with reunification.
Yoon Suk Yeol, the president of South Korea, told his cabinet that the country “will retaliate multiple times stronger” if the North carried out a provocation, citing its “overwhelming response capabilities” in the military.
Head of Cambridge University’s Centre for Geopolitics’ Japan and Koreas Programme Dr. John Nilsson-Wright called Kim’s comments “unprecedented” and said it was “highly unusual” for a North Korean leader to deviate from the unification policy.
He stated, “Relationships between the North and South do occasionally cool off, but this has taken the relationship in a different direction.”