North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said that South Korea is “primary foe” as he warned that Pyongyang did not intend to avoid war if it happens.
The North Korean leader also called for the constitution to be changed in a speech to North Korea’s parliament. Unification with South Korea was no longer possible as Seoul seeks regime collapse and absorption, Kim Jong Un said, asserting that the constitution should be amended to educate North Koreans that South Korea is a “primary foe and invariable principal enemy”.
North Korea should define territory as separate from the South, he said, adding, “We don’t want war but we have no intention of avoiding it.”
North Korea should plan for “completely occupying, subjugating and reclaiming” South Korea in war and South Koreans should also no longer be referred to as fellow countrymen, Kim Jong Un said as he called for ending all inter-Korean communication and the destruction of a monument to reunification in Pyongyang.
Three organisations dealing with unification and inter-Korean tourism would also be shut down, it was reported after South Korean president Yoon Suk Yeol said that Pyongyang was being “anti-national” for calling the South a hostile country.
This comes amid a series of missile tests by North Korea. Lim Eul-chul, professor of North Korea studies at South Korea’s Kyungnam university said that Kim Jong Un laid out plans in his speech to improve livelihoods of North Koreans while the US is distracted with other crises.
Won Gon Park of Seoul’s Ewha Womans university said as per news agency Reuters that Kim Jong Un appeared to feel threatened by ties between US and South Korea.
“Kim Jong Un’s increasingly aggressive language appears to show he feels he’s lost the upper hand in the inter-Korean relationship,” Won Gon Park said.