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North Korea is turning the relationship with South Korea into a ‘hostile warring country’, and inter-Korean relations are becoming tense. Chairman Kim Jong-un seems to be escalating the level of military threat to the South in the run-up to the April general elections by taking steps to fuel confrontation between the two countries, including the deletion of the expression ‘peaceful unification’. According to the Korean Central News Agency on the 16th, Chairman Kim attended the 10th meeting of the 14th Supreme People’s Assembly held at Mansudae Assembly Hall in Pyongyang the day before (15th) and reiterated the shift in policy towards the South by saying, “The painful history of inter-Korean relations concludes that we cannot go together on the path of national revival and unification with the South Koreans whose sense of kinship has intensified in the frenzy of confrontation that is becoming increasingly wicked and arrogant every day, making total confrontation with our Republic (North Korea) a national policy and dreaming of ‘regime collapse’ and ‘absorption unification’.”
He also stated, “Specify in the constitution to make the southern region North Korea’s territory, airspace, and territorial waters,” and maintained the position of legally making South Korea an ‘enemy country’ or ‘occupation target’. He then directed, “We must shift the basic principles and directions of struggle by setting up measures to reorganize and reform the organizations of the South’s business sector, including the Central Committee of the Party’s Unification Front while recognizing and accepting the reality.”
Such remarks by Chairman Kim are interpreted as an intention to put the finishing touches on North Korea’s strategy towards the South, which maintains a hostile tone. North Korea has gradually taken steps to define it as a warring country, not a cooperating country, since the Yoon Suk-yeul government, recognized the cooperation of South Korea, the United States, and Japan as disruptors. The intention is to remove from the problem those who obstruct North Korean-style ‘enemy unification’. North Korea utilized South Korea to conduct North-U.S. dialogue in 2018~2019 but has experienced that the calculation does not work out in a three-party structure.
In this regard, experts have analyzed that North Korea’s behavior is part of the pretext for constitutionalizing its future nuclear policy. Senior researcher Hong Min of the Unification Research Institute said, “The purpose of North Korea sending a message through constitutionalization is generally strong in the dimension of ‘message for the U.S.’,” and predicted, “The constitutionalization of the nuclear policy will engrave on the U.S. that it is difficult to reverse North Korea’s denuclearization.”
He added, “Chairman Kim made more extreme remarks than usual, but the possibility of actual war provocation is not high,” and explained, “Kim Jong-un’s recent remarks are strongly aimed at messaging to the U.S. that North Korea and the U.S. are the sole parties to the Korean Peninsula issue by discarding national relations and removing South Korea from the party.”
Professor Lim Eul-chul of the Far East Problem Research Institute at Gyeongnam National University also analyzed, “While Kim Jong-un is pushing for war preparations, he is also presenting the direction of national policy to achieve economic construction and improvement of people’s lives at the same time,” and said, “The background to Chairman Kim showing his will for military unification against the South and raising the atmosphere of war to the highest level is judged to be a ploy to promote high-intensity internal cohesion and resource concentration for the overall achievement of economic construction and improvement of people’s lives.”
Meanwhile, a government official from the Unification Ministry, meeting with reporters, said of Chairman Kim’s remarks, “I think the anxiety of absorption unification into a free democratic system is working,” and said, “North Korea seems to have an internal demand to divert internal dissatisfaction to the outside and heighten hostility towards the South in a situation where economic sanctions and difficulties from the new coronavirus infection are intensifying.”
By. Young Hoon Park
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