North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on Monday called for a constitutional amendment to label South Korea as the “main enemy” and warned that South Korea would not avoid it if war broke out, state media KCNA reported. It was reported on Tuesday.
In a speech to the Supreme People's Assembly, North Korea's rubber-stamp parliament, Kim said he had concluded that unification with South Korea was no longer possible and accused South Korea of seeking regime collapse and absorption.
Kim said the constitution should be amended to educate North Koreans that South Korea is their “main enemy and unchanging main enemy” and to define North Korea's territory as separate from South Korea. He said that.
“We don't want war, but we don't intend to avoid it,” Kim said, according to the Korean Central News Agency.
North Korea should also plan to “completely occupy, conquer, and take back” South Korea in the event of war, Kim added, and that South Koreans should no longer be called brethren. He called for cutting off all communication between them. and the destruction of the Unification Monument in Pyongyang.
State media added that three organizations dealing with unification and inter-Korean tourism will also be closed.
South Korean President Yun Seok-Yeol said at a cabinet meeting that North Korea was “anti-national” for calling South Korea a hostile country.
Kim's call for constitutional reform comes amid worsening tensions on the peninsula amid a series of recent missile tests and calls for North Korea to break decades of policy and change its relationship with South Korea. Ta.
A large portion of Mr. Kim's speech laid out plans for improving livelihoods, and Mr. Kim said his rhetoric toward South Korea and the United States would help maintain domestic unity while the United States was preoccupied with other crises. , Lim Urcheol said. , a professor who studies North Korea at Kyungnam University in South Korea.
Meanwhile, Park Won-gon of Ewha Womans University in Seoul said that Kim feels threatened by South Korea and the United States' strengthening of their extended nuclear deterrent, the deployment of U.S. strategic assets to the Korean Peninsula, and trilateral military efforts with Japan. He claimed that it seemed to be the case.
“Kim Jong Un's increasingly aggressive words and actions seem to indicate that he feels he has lost his upper hand in inter-Korean relations,” Park told Reuters.
