North Korea renounces peaceful reunification with the South and warns that it will not avoid war

For Kim Jong-un, North Korea's supreme leader, the time has come to put an end to the past. In a speech this Monday in the parliament of the secretive country, he called for revising the North Korean constitution to reflect the idea “of completely occupying, subjugating and claiming” South Korea and “annexing” it in the event that a war breaks out on the peninsula. He has also asked to name Seoul as his “main enemy” and delete expressions such as “northern half” and “independence, peaceful reunification and great national unity” from the fundamental norm. The change coincides with a moment of special tension with Seoul and Washington, and of growing rapprochement with Vladimir Putin's Russia.

In the speech, with a bellicose tone, Kim justifies the reinforcement of his military and “nuclear deterrence” capabilities and assures that the “danger of a war breaking out caused by a physical clash has worsened considerably and has reached a red line.” He also blames South Korea and the United States for this escalation of tensions. “We do not want war, but we have no intention of avoiding it either,” he says, according to what he has collected. The Pyongyang Times.

The president's intervention coincides with the publication of a more than controversial article in the media specialized in the Korean Peninsula 38north.org. Graduated Is Kim Jong-un preparing for war?, The text assures that the situation is “more dangerous than ever since the beginning of June 1950,” when the Korean War began. “It may sound overly dramatic, but we believe that, like his grandfather in 1950, Kim Jong-un has made the strategic decision to go to war,” the authors warn.

The article is signed by two prestigious analysts: Robert L. Carlin (among other things, former head of the Northeast Asia division of the Office of Intelligence and Research of the US State Department, where he participated in the negotiations between Washington and Pyongyang) and Siegfried S. Hecker (no less than a scientist who has directed the Los Alamos National Laboratory, where the atomic bomb was developed, and one of the few who has had access to North Korea's atomic facilities).

The analyst Ramón Pacheco, KF-VUB Korea professor at the Free University of Brussels and senior professor at King's College London, explains that the article is being “very criticized” and considers that some of the arguments on which it is based are not very solid, such as the risks that Kim would be willing to take or relations between China and Korea. “In my view, North Korea is signaling that it considers relations with South Korea and the United States broken under their current presidents,” he says.

“Exaggerated. 2010 was more tense”

In his opinion, Pyongyang will continue its artillery fire, ballistic missile tests, satellite launches, diplomatic rapprochement with Russia and, if possible, towards China. “We may return to the situation of 2010, when North Korea killed South Korean soldiers and civilians in the Yellow and East Seas. Although I don't take this for granted. But from there to talking about a war, it seems to me that there is a world. I don't see it, really.” He also does not believe that it is the most tense situation that has been experienced on the peninsula since the Korean War. “That's an exaggeration: 2010 was much more tense.”

Jenny Town, director of 38north.org, takes a similar line to Pacheco's. For this expert, in her speech, Kim is recognizing that “there is no path to peaceful reunification” and that “it is very unlikely that real cooperation with South Korea will be resumed, due to sanctions and because the geopolitical environment is changing.” “It has become more hostile.” However, for the principal researcher at the American think tank Stimson Center, “saying that you are 'prepared for war' is not synonymous with 'being prepared to start it'.”

Town adds that, although in the short term “the changes mean a worsening of the relationship”, in the long run the fact that the North Korean Foreign Ministry is in charge of relations with the neighboring country, instead of the Department of the United Front of the Central Committee of the Workers' Party, “could open the door to a dialogue from State to State.”

This analyst emphasizes the fact that North Korea is “supplying large reserves of ammunition, weapons and even missiles” to Russia, so “it does not seem like the right time to start its own war.” Rather, she believes, Pyongyang is following the line of Washington and Seoul, which have toughened their speeches “as a justification for strengthening deterrence and carrying out joint military maneuvers.” Therefore, she has the theory that the North Korean leader's war rhetoric “helps him promote nationalism and, thus, redirect resources towards military industrial production, both to replenish stocks and to continue supplying weapons to Russia.”

Ties with Moscow

Moscow has strengthened ties with Pyongyang since President Vladimir Putin sent his troops to invade Ukraine in 2022. Kim and the Kremlin chief met in the Russian city of Vladivostok last September. During their meeting, in which both leaders showed their good harmony, the North Korean confided in Putin that he will support all decisions in his “sacred war” against the West and against imperialism.

Another sign of the good relationship between both nations is that the North Korean Foreign Minister, Choe Son-hui, visited Moscow this week, where she met, in addition to her Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, with Putin himself. This Wednesday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov declared that Pyongyang “is a very important partner” and that Moscow “is focused on continuing to develop our relations in all areas, including sensitive ones,” Reuters reports.

In a latest show of force, the North Korean regime tested a new intermediate-range solid-fuel hypersonic missile last Sunday, according to state news agency KNCA. In the last year, the country has increased its short, medium and long range ballistic tests. But it has not carried out any atomic tests since 2017.

In any case, analysts Hecker and Carlin weigh the risks: “North Korea has a large nuclear arsenal, according to our estimates, potentially 50 or 60 nuclear warheads that can be launched as missiles and that can reach all of South Korea, practically all of Japan (including Okinawa) and Guam,” they say on 38north.org. “If, as we suspect, Kim has convinced himself that, after decades of trying, there is no way to confront the United States, his recent words and actions point toward the prospect of a military solution using that arsenal.”

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