North Korea sees South as ‘primary foe,’ as Kim Jong Un says reunification no longer possible

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North Korea is giving up on the possibility of reconciliation with South Korea, which leader Kim Jong Un said should now be seen as the North’s “primary foe,” in the latest worrying sign that Pyongyang is preparing for potential conflict.

Mr. Kim said he had concluded that reunification is “impossible” and there are now “two states both existing on the Korean peninsula.”

“The North-South relationship is no longer one of kinship or homogeneity, but a relationship of two hostile states, a relationship of two belligerents,” Mr. Kim said, state news agency KCNA reported Tuesday.

In a speech to the Supreme People’s Assembly, North Korea’s rubber-stamp parliament, Mr. Kim accused Seoul of seeking the destruction of his regime. He said the constitution should be changed so all North Koreans understand the South is their “primary foe and invariable principal enemy.”

Three organizations dealing with reunification and inter-Korean tourism will be shut down, North Korean state media said. A giant reunification arch in Pyongyang, built by Mr. Kim’s father, will be torn down.

But while Mr. Kim has given up on the dream of peaceful reunification, he has not ruled out launching an invasion of the South, as his grandfather Kim Il Sung did in 1950, plunging the peninsula into a bloody war that ended in a stalemate three years later, setting the current border between the two Koreas.

“We don’t want war but we have no intention of avoiding it,” Mr. Kim said, adding that North Korea should plan for “completely occupying, subjugating and reclaiming” the South.

He said the border should be “clearly drawn,” adding that if Seoul “invades our ground territory, territorial air space or territorial waters by even 0.001 mm, it will be considered a provocation of war.”

This includes the Northern Limit Line, he said, a disputed and ill-defined maritime border between the Koreas in the Yellow Sea, also known as the West Sea.

At a cabinet meeting Tuesday, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol dismissed Mr. Kim’s statements as a “political provocation” and accused him of being “anti-national and ahistorical” in defining the two Koreas as separate countries.

Pyongyang and Seoul have never signed a peace treaty and remain officially at war. Progress toward finally ending the conflict was made during the administration of Mr. Yoon’s predecessor Moon Jae-in, who held peace talks with Mr. Kim and helped arrange a historic summit between the North Korean leader and then U.S. president Donald Trump.

That rapprochement led to increased engagement between the two Koreas, but those gains have unravelled in recent years after tensions ramped up again. Pyongyang was almost completely cut off from the world during the pandemic, leading to considerable economic hardship. In the past, Mr. Kim has adopted a more aggressive posture at times of domestic turmoil in an apparent attempt to redirect public anger.

Pyongyang has conducted a series of missile tests in recent months – including of an intercontinental ballistic missile Sunday – and Mr. Kim has also spoken of expanding his nuclear arsenal.

Since the end of the Korean War in 1953, the peninsula has gone through periods of escalating and cooling tensions, both under Mr. Kim and his father, Kim Jong Il, who defied international pressure and made his country a nuclear power. Many South Koreans pay little mind to their restive northern neighbour, even as Mr. Kim’s propaganda outlets bluster about destroying the North’s enemies.

But with the United States distracted by wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, and China threatening Taiwan in the wake of the island’s recent election, analysts warned against dismissing Mr. Kim’s latest moves.

Hong Min, senior research fellow at the Korea Institute for National Unification, told Seoul-based NK News that Mr. Kim’s remarks on reunification and territorial sovereignty were the “most groundbreaking thing” he had proclaimed “since coming into power.”

Writing last week, veteran North Korea analysts Robert L. Carlin and Siegfried S. Hecker warned the situation on the peninsula “is more dangerous than it has been at any time since early June 1950.”

“That may sound overly dramatic, but we believe that, like his grandfather in 1950, Kim Jong Un has made a strategic decision to go to war,” they said. “We do not know when or how Kim plans to pull the trigger, but the danger is already far beyond the routine warnings in Washington, Seoul and Tokyo about Pyongyang’s ‘provocations.”

They warned that assuming Mr. Kim would never launch a war because of the devastation North Korea would likely suffer would be a “fundamental misreading” of his view of history “and a grievous failure of imagination” that could lead to disaster. “This might seem like madness, but history suggests those who have convinced themselves that they have no good options left will take the view that even the most dangerous game is worth the candle.”

Not all signs are negative, however. North Korea has gradually been reopening to the outside world, with some tour agencies recently inviting customers to apply to travel there once again.

Pyongyang has also been supplying weapons to Moscow for Russia’s war in Ukraine, something it would likely stop doing if it was preparing for an imminent conflict of its own. North Korea’s Foreign Minister, Choe Son Hui, is currently in Russia and was expected to meet President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday.

China is also a factor. North Korea’s most important ally has helped prop up Pyongyang in the past but has no interest in a war on its eastern border, let alone a potential nuclear conflict, and may act to rein in Mr. Kim’s aggression.

With reports from Reuters.