North Korea's constitution now designates the South as a “hostile state”

Photo: North Korean Press Service via Associated Press In January, Kim Jong-un had designated the South as his country's “main enemy.”

Claire Lee – Agence France-Presse in Seoul

Published at 9:20 p.m.

• Asia

North Korea announced Thursday that its constitution now designates South Korea as a “hostile state,” confirming for the first time a change promised in January by its leader Kim Jong-un, and justifying the dynamiting of the only two roads and railways linking the two enemy countries.

The transportation routes on the eastern and western parts of the Korean Peninsula, the only ones to have been briefly reopened since the end of the Korean War in 1953, “were completely blocked by explosions,” the official KCNA news agency wrote, confirming reports from Seoul on Tuesday.

“This is an inevitable and legitimate measure, taken in accordance with the requirements of the Constitution of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, which clearly defines the Republic of Korea as a hostile state,” KCNA said, referring to North and South Korea by their official names.

This is the first time that Pyongyang has confirmed the “hostile state” status of South Korea in its constitution, a measure Kim Jong-un announced in January before the Supreme National Assembly, the country’s parliament. North Korean.

“In my opinion, we can specify in our Constitution the issue of complete occupation, subjugation and recapture of the Republic of Korea and its annexation as part of the territory of our Republic in the event of war on the Korean Peninsula,” he said. He also threatened to go to war over any violation of North Korean territory “even by 0.001 millimeter.”

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Previously, under an inter-Korean agreement in 1991, relations with the South were defined as a “special relationship” under a reunification process, not a state-to-state relationship.

The announcement of the constitutional change and the destruction of infrastructure that accompanied it mark a new stage in the radicalization of the Kim Jong-un regime's policy towards South Korea. In January, the North Korean leader had designated the South as his country's “main enemy.”

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“On the brink of war”

KCNA justified the demolitions of roads and railways, carried out entirely on the North Korean side, by the “serious political and military provocations of the hostile forces” which it said had brought the two Koreas “to the brink of war.”

Pyongyang “will continue to take measures to permanently fortify the closed southern border,” a Defense Ministry spokesman was quoted by KCNA as saying.

In practice, the border between the two Koreas is already completely closed. Since 1953, the two inter-Korean roads and two inter-Korean railway lines have been restored and reopened only during brief periods of détente.

The South Korean Unification Ministry deplored the provocation as “extremely abnormal,” and recalled that it was Seoul that had financed the costly reconstruction of this infrastructure. “North Korea still has repayment obligations regarding this financing,” it noted.

Relations between the two Koreas have deteriorated significantly since conservative President Yoon Suk Yeol came to power in Seoul in 2022, a supporter of a stronger military alliance with the United States and Japan and a hard line against nuclear-armed Pyongyang, which regularly tests ballistic missiles in violation of numerous United Nations resolutions.

South Korea, the United States and Japan regularly conduct joint military exercises that Pyongyang views as dress rehearsals for an invasion of the North or an overthrow of its regime.

The current escalation comes as the North Korean regime complains about drone overflights that it says have dropped propaganda leaflets over the capital filled with “inflammatory rumors and nonsense.” Pyongyang accuses Seoul, and warns that one more drone would be considered “a declaration of war.”

Local speculation in South Korea points to South Korean militants, who are familiar with propaganda efforts toward the North, sending leaflets or dollars usually by balloon but sometimes using small, hard-to-detect drones.

Since May, North Korea has sent thousands of balloons loaded with garbage toward the South, prompting Seoul to resume loudspeaker propaganda broadcasts along the border and suspend a 2018 agreement intended to prevent military clashes.