North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un has threatened South Korea with all-out war in an “unprecedented” declaration ruling out unification.
In a speech to North Korea’s Supreme People’s Assembly, Kim branded South Korea to be the North’s “Principal enemy.”
The despot leader also announced that three organisations focused on unifying North and South Korea would be shut down.
North and South Korea were divided following the end of the Korean War in 1953 with no formal peace treaty ever being signed.
Kim’s speech comes amid heightened tensions of the peninsular in recent months.
Kim blamed the region’s rising tensions on South Korea and the United States.
He claimed that pursuing reconciliation and peaceful reunification with the South had become impossible due to their status as “top-class stooges” aligned with foreign powers.
He urged the assembly to amend North Korea’s constitution, naming South Korea as the North’s “primary foe and invariable principal enemy”.
Kim said he believes that the revised constitution should explicitly state North Korea’s goals of “occupying, subjugating and reclaiming” South Korea.
Dr John Nilsson-Wright, from Cambridge University’s Centre for Geopolitics, believes Mr Kim’s intervention is “unprecedented”.
He told BBC it is “highly unusual” for a North Korean leader to abandon the stated policy of pursuing unification.
Dr Nilsson-Wright said: “It’s not unusual for relations between the North and South to cool, but this has taken the relationship in a different direction.”
He argued that Kim’s opposition to the West can be traced back to a 2019 summit with then-US President Donald Trump in Vietnam, which ended without an agreement, “This has been an acute disappointment and loss of face for Kim.”
