North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, has called for a change to the constitution to identify South Korea as the “number one hostile state”, ending the regime’s commitment to unifying the Korean peninsula.
In a speech to the supreme people’s assembly – North Korea’s rubber-stamp parliament – Kim said he no longer believed unification was possible and accused the South of attempting to foment regime change and promote unification by stealth.
In another sign of quickly deteriorating ties between the two Koreas, which ended their 1950-53 war with a truce but not a peace treaty – Kim said: “We don’t want war, but we have no intention of avoiding it.”
Couldn’t they just accept the current two-state solution and stop grousing about it?
Was reading a book about the history of the Three Tigers of Asia (Japan, China, Korea), and the author shared popularity posts about how SK doesn’t even want unification anymore. It’s been too long and the whole “splitting families” concept is no longer applicable.
You have to read between the lines a bit, but that’s actually what Kim is doing here.
Look at it from the NK perspective. For 70 years, they’ve ostensibly wanted to “reunify” with the south, under the Kim regime. They’ve wanted to throw out foreign influence, eliminate the ROK government, and unite Korea under the DPRK flag.
In saying that reunification is impossible, Kim is effectively recognizing the south as a separate state.