North Korea’s Kim Jong-un has said unification with South Korea is no longer possible, and that the constitution should be changed to designate it the “principal enemy”.
Kim Jong-un also said three organizations dealing with reunification would shut down, state media KCNA reported.
South Korea’s President Yoon Suk Yeol said it would respond “multiple times stronger” to any provocation from North Korea.
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.
In a speech delivered at the Supreme People’s Assembly, Kim Jong-un said that the constitution should be amended to educate North Koreans that South Korea is a “primary foe and invariable principal enemy”.
He also said that if a war breaks out on the Korean peninsula, the country’s constitution should reflect the issue of “occupying”, “recapturing” and “incorporating” the South into its territory.
Kim Jong-un – 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 organizations tasked with reunification.
Speaking to his cabinet on January 16, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol said that if the North carried out a provocation, the South “will retaliate multiple times stronger”, pointing to the South Korean military’s “overwhelming response capabilities”.
Kim Jong-un’s comments came as relations significantly weakened on the Korean Peninsula in recent months.
In November, North Korea fully suspended a five-year military deal with the South aimed at lowering military tensions. It promised to withdraw all measures “taken to prevent military conflict in all spheres including ground, sea and air”, and said it would deploy more forces to the border region.
The South had partly suspended the agreement days earlier after Kim Jong-un claimed to have successfully launched a spy satellite into space.
The rhetoric – and provocative actions – from the North have only escalated since then.
At year-end policy meetings, the North Korean said he needed to “newly formulate” the North’s stance towards inter-Korean relations and reunification policy, adding that the stated goal was to “make a decisive policy change” related to “the enemy”.
He also threatened a nuclear attack on the South, and called for a build-up of his country’s military arsenal.
North Korea has also launched missiles in recent weeks, as well as live-fire exercises close to South Korean territory.
In a report published last week for 38 North, a US-based organization with a focus on North Korea, former State Department official Robert Carlin and nuclear scientist Siegfried S Hecker said they saw the situation on the Korean Peninsula as “more dangerous than it has ever been” since the start of the Korean War in 1950.
The two countries have boosted ties recently, with both isolated by Western powers, and last September Kim Jong-un visited Russia where he met Vladimir Putin.
