SEOUL, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has called for revising the country’s constitution to define South Korea as its “invariable principal enemy” and to codify the commitment to “completely occupying” the South Korean territory in the event of war, state media reported Tuesday.

President Yoon Suk Yeol hit back at Kim’s hostile rhetoric with a vow to punish North Korea “multiple times” as hard in the case that it stages a provocation against South Korea.

In a speech delivered at a key parliamentary meeting Monday, Kim made it clear he will not pursue a decadeslong policy of seeking reconciliation and unification with South Korea any longer, according to the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).

“In my opinion, we can specify in our constitution the issue of completely occupying, subjugating and reclaiming the ROK and annex it as a part of the territory of our Republic in case of a war breaks out on the Korean peninsula,” Kim said, using the acronym of South Korea’s official name, the Republic of Korea.

He
called for stipulating in the constitution that education programs should be strengthened to get North Koreans to be instilled with “the firm idea that the ROK is their primary foe and invariable principal enemy.”

His barrage of bitter rhetoric against Seoul came as he defined relations with South Korea as those between “two states hostile to each other” at a year-end party meeting.

Stressing that it is a “serious anachronistic mistake” to regard Seoul as a partner for reconciliation and unification, North Korea also decided to abolish three agencies meant to promote inter-Korean dialogue and cooperation at the Supreme People’s Assembly (SPA) session.

The bodies in question are the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Country, the National Economic Cooperation Bureau and the Kumgangsan International Tourism Administration.

At the SPA meeting, Kim also ordered steps to get rid of symbols of inter-Korean reconciliation, calling them “the remnants of the past era.”

He pointed out the need to “phy
sically and completely” cut off the North side of cross-border railway tracks to an “irretrievable level” and dismantle an “eye sore” monument in Pyongyang built to mark late founder Kim Il-sung’s blueprint for federation system-based unification.

“We should … take other measures so as to completely eliminate such concepts as ‘reunification,’ ‘reconciliation’ and ‘fellow countrymen’ from the national history of our Republic,” Kim said.

His speech came amid heightened tensions on the Korean Peninsula, sparked by North Korea’s weapons tests, including the launch of a hypersonic missile this week.

Concerns about suspected arms trade between North Korea and Russia have also risen as the North’s foreign minister is currently visiting Moscow for talks amid deepening military cooperation.

Pyongyang is widely expected to further stage provocative acts in the run-up to South Korea’s parliamentary elections in April and the U.S. presidential election in November.

Touching on the North’s nuclear weapons, the Nort
h’s leader said in his parliamentary speech that his country will not avoid war though it has no intention to unilaterally start it unless provoked.

“As the southern border of our country has been clearly drawn, the illegal ‘Northern Limit Line’ (NLL) and any other boundary can never be tolerated, and if the ROK violates even 0.001 millimeters of our territorial land, air and waters, it will be considered a war provocation,” he said.

North Korea has not recognized the NLL, the de facto inter-Korean maritime border, long demanding that the line be moved farther south as it was unilaterally drawn by the U.S.-led U.N. Command after the 1950-53 Korean War.

The North fired hundreds of rounds of artillery shells near the tense sea border in the Yellow Sea earlier this month, prompting the South Korean military to carry out live-fire drills in response.

“The war will terribly destroy the entity called the Republic of Korea and put an end to its existence. And it will inflict an unimaginably crushing defeat upon
the U.S.,” Kim warned.

At the year-end party meeting, Kim urged stepped-up war readiness to deter what he called “unprecedented” acts of U.S.-led confrontation against his country.

During his inspection of munitions factories last week, the North’s leader threatened to annihilate South Korea if Seoul attempts to use force against the North.

South Korea’s unification ministry said that behind Kim’s bombardment of antagonistic messages against the South apparently lies North Korea’s anxiety about the stability of the regime and fears of unification by absorption.

“Amid difficulties aggravated by U.N. sanctions and the COVID-19 pandemic, North Korea may intend to boost its hostility against South Korea to deflect internal complaints to outside,” a ministry official told reporters on condition of anonymity.

The official added that North Korea also appears to be staging psychological warfare to drive a wedge in South Korean society by shifting the responsibility of heightened security tensions onto the South.

In a Cabinet meeting early Tuesday, Yoon urged South Koreans to joint hands to “defeat” the deceptive tactics and propaganda of the North Korean regime.

Yoon also assessed Kim’s message as an acknowledgement of the regime’s nature as an “anti-national and anti-historical group.”

Source: Yonhap News Agency