NK leader calls for defining S. Korea as 'No. 1 hostile country' in Constitution

This photo, carried by North Korea's official Korean Central News Agency, Jan. 16, shows the North's leader Kim Jong-un attending a a key parliamentary meeting of the Central Committee of the ruling Workers' Party of Korea the previous day. Yonhap

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.

In a speech delivered at a key parliamentary meeting Monday, Kim called for drawing up legal measures to define South Korea not as a counterpart for reconciliation and unification, 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 full 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."

This photo, carried by North Korea's official Korean Central News Agency, Jan. 16, shows North Korean officials attending 10th session of the 14th Supreme People's Assembly (SPA) in Pyongyang. Yonhap

Kim addressed the nation at the 10th session of the 14th Supreme People's Assembly (SPA), about two weeks after he defined relations with South Korea as those between "two states hostile to each other" at a year-end party meeting.

The SPA is the highest organ of state power under the North's constitution, but it actually only rubber-stamps decisions by the ruling Workers' Party of Korea (WPK).

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.

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.

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The North's cabinet and related organizations will take "practical" measures to implement the SPA decision, it added.

At Monday's meeting, Kim also ordered steps to "get rid of the remnants of the past era" that can be regarded as symbols of inter-Korean reconciliation.

"For the present, we should take strict stepwise measures to thoroughly block all the channels of north-south communication along the border, including the one of physically and completely cutting off the railway tracks in our side ... to an irretrievable level," Kim said.

The North's leader also ordered the dismantling of "the eye-sore" Monument to the Three Charters for National Reunification, a monument built in 2001 in Pyongyang to mark late founder Kim Il-sung's blueprint for federation system-based unification.

Touching on the North's nuclear weapons, Kim reiterated his country will not avoid war though it has no intention to unilaterally start an armed conflict 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, 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 and preparations for a "great event to suppress South Korea's whole territory in the event of a contingency.

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. (Yonhap)