Kim Jong Un Declares That North Korea Will No Longer Seek Amity With South Korea

According to state media on Tuesday, North Korean leader; Kim Jong Un declared that his nation will no longer seek reconciliation with South Korea and that the North’s constitution should be revised to do away with the notion of shared sovereignty between the two war-torn nations.

The historic decision to abandon a decades-long quest for peaceful unification—which was predicated on a shared sense of national homogeneity between the two Koreas—occurs amid heightened tensions, as the speed at which Mr. Kim is developing weapons and the South’s military drills with the US have accelerated in lockstep.

According to some experts, Mr. Kim may be trying to make it more obvious that he will deal directly with the United States regarding the nuclear standoff, which has intensified due to differences over the strict sanctions led by the United States over his expanding nuclear weapons program. He may also be trying to lessen South Korea’s influence in matters of regional security.

The South’s designation as an enduring foe rather than a prospective ally for peace talks may also be a component of Mr. Kim’s escalating nuclear doctrine, which empowers the armed forces to carry out nuclear strikes against adversaries in advance if they believe Pyongyang’s leadership is in danger.

The actions by North Korea coincide with Mr. Kim’s active efforts to strengthen his ties to Beijing and Moscow to overcome diplomatic isolation and acquire more power by uniting against Washington.

During a meeting of the rubber-stamp parliament on Monday, North Korea also dissolved the major government agencies that had been in charge of overseeing relations with South Korea, according to the North’s official Korean Central News Agency.

The two Koreas are engaged in an “acute confrontation,” according to the Supreme People’s Assembly, and the North would seriously err by viewing the South as a diplomatic partner.

“The Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Country, the National Economic Co-operation Bureau and the (Diamond Mountain) International Tourism Administration, tools which existed for (North-South) dialogue, negotiations and co-operation, are abolished,” the assembly said in a statement.

The Korean Peninsula has become a dangerous war-risk zone as a result of US strategic military asset deployments, increased joint military exercises, and trilateral security cooperation with Japan, according to Mr. Kim, who blamed the US and South Korea for escalating tensions in the region during his speech, according to KCNA.

Mr. Kim asserted that the South, whom he referred to as “top-class stooges” of foreign powers fixated on using confrontational tactics, has made it hard for the North to pursue peacemaking and a peaceful reunion.

To designate South Korea as the North’s “primary foe and invariable principal enemy,” he asked for the assembly to amend the North’s constitution.

He stated that if another conflict breaks out on the Korean Peninsula, North Korea should be guaranteed the right to “occupy, subjugate, and reclaim” South Korea as part of its territory under the new constitution.

To “eliminate such concepts as reunification, ‘reconciliation’, and ‘fellow countrymen’ from the national history of our republic,” he also ordered the elimination of historical emblems of inter-Korean reconciliation.

In particular, he called for the removal of an ugly Pyongyang monument honoring the quest for reunification and the closure of cross-border railway portions.

“We cannot travel the path of national restoration and reunification together; this is the ultimate conclusion drawn from the bitter history of the inter-Korean relations,” he declared.

During a Cabinet meeting in Seoul, South Korean President; Yoon Suk Yeol stated that Mr. Kim’s remarks demonstrate the Pyongyang government’s “anti-national and anti-historical” stance.

According to He Yoon, the South is keeping up a strong defense posture and threatens to punish the North “multiple times hard” if it provokes it.

“The North’s fictitious peace strategy, which forced us to choose between ‘peace’ and ‘war,’ is no longer effective,” he declared.

During his statement to the assembly, Mr. Kim restated that while the North does not intend to launch a war on its own, it also does not intend to avoid one.