Kim Jong Un moves to modify North Korean constitution, write in South Korea as ‘No. 1 enemy’
Kim Jong Un announced North Korea will be ending all diplomatic or cooperative initiatives with South Korea, suggesting constitutional edits to enshrine them as a national enemy.
The North Korean government claims it is severing all ties with its southern neighbor and will end all programs seeking reunification or cooperation between the two Koreas.
Supreme leader Kim Jong Un announced Tuesday that he ordered the disestablishment of all diplomatic and solidarity initiatives with South Korea, accusing the country of military aggression alongside the US.
"We have formulated a new stand on the north-south relations and the policy of reunification and dismantled all the organizations we established as solidarity bodies for peaceful reunification at the current session of the Supreme People's Assembly which discusses the laws of the DPRK. It can be said this is an indispensable process that should take place without fail."
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Kim threatened that even the slightest disregard for national boundaries was now grounds for a war.
"As the southern border of our country has been clearly drawn, the illegal 'northern limit line' and any other boundary can never be tolerated, and if the ROK violates even 0.001 mm of our territorial land, air and waters, it will be considered a war provocation."
The supreme leader even went so far as to suggest modifying the nation's constitution to explicitly write in South Korea as the country's "invariable, principal enemy."
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"In this regard, I think it is necessary to revise some contents of the Constitution of the DPRK," he wrote. "I have already recalled at the recent plenary meeting that the so-called constitution of the ROK openly stipulates that ‘the territory of the ROK covers the Korean peninsula and its attached island.’"
"ROK" refers to South Korea's official name, the Republic of Korea. DPRK similarly refers to North Korea's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
"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."
The North Korean Constitution has been modified several times since 1992, when it raised Kim's father, Kim Jong Il, closer to the deified status of his grandfather and founder of the country, Kim Il Sung.
Since then, the constitution has been extensively edited to reinterpret the country's communist ideology, enshrine its militaristic development as a national virtue, and further cement the Kim lineage as its ruling dynasty.
Many rewrites of the constitution included such extensive edits that the approved drafts could be considered unique documents.