North Korea’s approach toward South Korea has swayed widely over the past decades. While it has often called the South its “sworn” and “principal enemy” and threatened to “annihilate” it with nuclear weapons, at times it has also engaged in dialogue and discussed a possible reunification.
But, according to state media reports on Tuesday, North Korea has formally abandoned peaceful reunification as a key policy goal. In announcing the drastic shift, the North’s leader, Kim Jong-un, said the North no longer saw the South as “the partner of reconciliation and reunification” but instead as an enemy that must be subjugated, if necessary, through a nuclear war.
In recent decades, the reunification of the two Koreas has become increasingly unlikely as the economic gap between them widened and mutual enmity deepened.
Mr. Kim unveiled his new stance on South Korea in a party meeting at the end of last month and in a speech he gave to the North’s rubber-stamp parliament, the Supreme People’s Assembly, on Monday.
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