North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has said unification with South Korea is no longer possible, calling for the constitution to be changed to designate the South as the 'principal enemy'. State media reported that he also ordered the closure of three organisations dealing with reunification.
Speaking at the Supreme People's Assembly, North Korea's rubber-stamp parliament, Mr Kim said the constitution should be amended to educate North Koreans that South Korea is a 'primary foe and invariable principal enemy'. He added that if war breaks out, the constitution should reflect the issue of 'occupying', 'recapturing' and 'incorporating' the South into North Korean territory.
South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol responded on Tuesday, saying that if the North carried out a provocation, the South 'will retaliate multiple times stronger', pointing to the military's 'overwhelming response capabilities'.
Dr John Nilsson-Wright, head of the Japan and Koreas Programme at Cambridge University's Centre for Geopolitics, described Mr Kim's remarks as 'unprecedented' and 'highly unusual'. He said Mr Kim's anti-Western stance can be traced back to the failed 2019 summit with then-US President Donald Trump in Vietnam, which ended without an agreement.
Relations between the two Koreas have significantly weakened in recent months. In November, North Korea fully suspended a five-year military deal aimed at lowering tensions, and has since carried out missile launches and live-fire exercises near South Korean territory. A report published last week by former State Department official Robert Carlin and nuclear scientist Siegfried S Hecker warned that the situation on the Korean Peninsula is 'more dangerous than it has ever been' since the start of the Korean War in 1950, adding that Kim Jong Un appears to have made a strategic decision to go to war.
Meanwhile, North Korea's Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui is in Russia, where she is expected to meet President Vladimir Putin. The two countries have boosted ties recently, with both isolated by Western powers.
