North Korean leader Kim Jong Un called on Monday for the constitution to be changed to ensure that South Korea is seen as the “main enemy” and warned that his country had no intention of avoiding war if it occurred, the US newspaper reported Tuesday. state media KCNA.
In a speech to the Supreme People’s Assembly, North Korea’s official parliament, Kim said he had concluded that unification with the South was no longer possible and accused Seoul of seeking regime collapse and unification by absorption.
Kim said the constitution should be amended to educate North Koreans that South Korea is a “major enemy and unchanging major enemy” and define the North’s territory as separate from the South.
“We don’t want war, but we have no intention of avoiding it,” Kim said, quoted by KCNA.
North Korea should also plan to “occupy, subjugate and completely claim” South Korea in the event of a war, and should also not continue to refer to South Koreans as compatriots, Kim added, calling for the severing of all inter-Korean communication. and the destruction of a reunification monument in Pyongyang.
A television screen shows an image of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un during a news program at the train station in Seoul, South Korea, Jan. 16, 2024. AP North Korean leader Kim Jong Un says the constitution must be changed to educate North Koreans that South Korea is a “major enemy and unchanging major enemy.” Via REUTERS
Three organizations dealing with inter-Korean unification and tourism will also be closed, state media added.
South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, in a cabinet meeting, said Pyongyang was being “anti-national” by calling the South a hostile country.
Kim’s call for constitutional changes comes as tensions have recently worsened on the Korean Peninsula amid a series of missile tests and an attempt by Pyongyang to break with decades of policy and change its relationship with the South.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un speaks at the 10th session of the 14th Supreme People’s Assembly at the Mansudae Assembly Hall in Pyongyang on January 15, 2024. KCNA VIA KNS/AFP via Getty Images
Significant parts of Kim’s speech laid out plans to improve livelihoods and suggested that his rhetoric toward South Korea and the United States was designed to help maintain internal unity and achieve economic and military goals, while the United States was distracted by other crisis, said Lim Eul-chul. , professor of North Korean studies at Kyungnam University in South Korea.
On the other hand, Won Gon Park of Ewha Women’s University in Seoul argued that Kim appeared to feel threatened by the strengthening of the extended nuclear deterrent by South Korea and the United States, the deployment of American strategic assets on the Peninsula Korea and trilateral military efforts with Japan.
“Kim Jong Un’s increasingly aggressive language appears to show that he feels he has lost the upper hand in the inter-Korean relationship,” Park told Reuters.
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Source: vtt.edu.vn