Wed, Jan 17, 2024 page1

• N Korea abolishes agencies working for reunification

  • AFP, SEOUL
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  North Korean leader Kim Jong-un threatened South Korea with war if “even 0.001mm” of the North’s territory is violated, as Pyongyang abolished agencies that oversaw cooperation and reunification, state media said yesterday.

  Kim also said Pyongyang would not recognize the two nations’ de facto maritime border, the Northern Limit Line, and called for constitutional changes allowing North Korea to “occupy” Seoul in war, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said.

  In Seoul, South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol told his Cabinet that should nuclear-armed North Korea carry out a provocation, South Korea would hit back with a response “multiple times stronger,” pointing to his military’s “overwhelming response capabilities.”

  

  North Korean leader Kim Jong-un attends the 10th Session of the 14th Supreme People’s Assembly of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea at the Mansudae Assembly Hall in Pyongyang on Monday.

  Photo: KCNA via Reuters

  The hawkish rhetoric on both sides of the border follows a sharp deterioration of inter-Korean ties, with Pyongyang’s spy satellite launch in November last year prompting Seoul to partially suspend a 2018 military agreement aimed at defusing tensions.

  Pyongyang’s decision to jettison the agencies charged with overseeing cooperation and reunification with South Korea was announced by North Korea’s rubber-stamp parliament, KCNA said, part of a string of measures that have escalated tensions, including live-fire artillery drills and missile launches.

  In a speech delivered at the Supreme People’s Assembly, Kim called for the drawing up of new legal measures to define South Korea as “the most hostile state,” KCNA reported.

  “In my opinion, we can specify in our constitution the issue of completely occupying, subjugating and reclaiming the ROK [Republic of Korea] and annex it as a part of the territory of our Republic in case a war breaks out on the Korean Peninsula,” Kim said.

  “If the Republic of Korea violates even 0.001mm of our territorial land, air and waters, it will be considered a war provocation,” he said.

  The decision comes shortly after Kim labeled South Korea the “principal enemy” and stated that continuing to seek reconciliation was a “mistake.”

  In their constitutions, both North and South Korea claim sovereignty over the whole of the Korean Peninsula.

  The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and the Republic of Korea — the North and South’s official names — were founded 75 years ago, but still technically regard each other as illegal entities.

  Until now, what passed for diplomatic relations were handled by the South Korean Ministry of Unification and the North Korean Committee for Peaceful Reunification — one of the agencies the Supreme People’s Assembly has now declared abolished.

  Cho Han-bum, a researcher at the Seoul-based Korea Institute for National Unification, said that the North Korean system has long been grounded on the idea of reunification, an unachieved wish of the nation’s founding leader and Kim’s grandfather, Kim Il-sung.

  “Now he is denying everything that his predecessors have done,” Cho said.

  Pyongyang might be engaging in “mirror imaging,” responding to Seoul’s adjustments to the mission of the unification ministry to focus more on human rights issues.

  “The Kim (Jong-un] regime is taking disproportionate steps in dismantling its inter-Korean organizations and formalizing a hostile policy line toward the South,” he said.
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