No longer “compatriots”, but “enemies”. No longer “reunification”, but “confrontation”. Kim Jong-un changes the words with which North Korea defines South Koreans and its ultimate political goal. A turning point that for once seems to go beyond mere propaganda and herald an operational change in Pyongyang’s posture. With effects that are difficult to calculate on the stability of the Korean peninsula, already put to the test by the events of recent months and weeks.
The news comes during a session of the Supreme People’s Assembly, the closest thing to a parliament that exists in North Korea, clearly under the rule of the leader. Here, Kim called for approval of an amendment to the country’s constitution.
What does this amendment provide? First: South Korea will be labeled the “principal and immutable enemy.” Second. A concrete definition of the Northern territory as definitively separated from the Southern territory will be included. Third. The territorial separation is followed by an almost identitarian separation, given that the South Koreans would no longer be called “compatriots” but “enemies”. Not only. In his speech, Kim also declared that in the event of a conflict, the territory of South Korea should be “completely occupied”, with the total “submission” of Seoul.
This all happens after Kim defined reunification as a mistake in his end-of-year speech to the Labor Party plenary. “I think it is a mistake that we should no longer make to consider the people we consider to be our worst enemies as someone with whom we should seek reunification and reconciliation,” Kim said on that occasion. With the constitutional amendment requested just over two weeks later, the supreme leader makes a historic breakthrough that could have very practical consequences.
Indeed, the first effect has already occurred with the closure and abolition of all agencies that promote inter-Korean cooperation. Kim then called for the destruction of Pyongyang’s reunification monument. An order that is very reminiscent of the one with which he blew up the inter-Korean liaison office in Kaesong, a few kilometers from the demilitarized zone, in the spring of 2020.
From there a long negative vortex began. First the record of ballistic launches in 2022, then the tightening of the opposing maneuvers with the strengthening of the alliance with the United States and Japan carried out by the conservative president Yoon Suk-yeol who came to power in the spring of 2022, a few weeks after the beginning of the war in Ukraine. Pyongyang has in turn strengthened relations with Moscow. It should not be overlooked that on Tuesday 16 January, the day of Kim’s announcement of the constitutional amendment, North Korean Defense Minister Choe Son-hui is in the Kremlin to meet her counterpart Sergei Lavrov and President Vladimir Putin, who after having received Kim last September in Vladivostok he may soon visit Pyongyang.
In the meantime, the situation on the peninsula could worsen further, awaiting two electoral winds with potentially important repercussions such as the legislative elections in South Korea next April 10 (which could expand the power in the hands of the democratic opposition and in dialogue with Pyongyang) and obviously the vote for the White House next November, with a return of Donald Trump that could call into question the United States‘ Asian alliance system.
But between the two Koreas, after the launch of the first North Korean spy satellite in November and the shooting along the maritime border at the beginning of the year, the conceptual change made by Kim foreshadows new episodes of tension and risks of accidents. This time, in short, it doesn’t seem just rhetorical.