North Korea no longer seeks reunification with South Korea
- Dec 12, 2024
- 2 min read
By: Suhwan Park
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un recently brushed aside decades of his country’s policy toward South Korea, proclaiming that peaceful reconciliation and reunification with the South was no longer possible. According to state outlet KCNA, Kim declared at a political gathering in January that North Korea “does not want war, but will not seek to avoid it”, in which they classified South Korea as their “primary foe and invariable principal enemy.” Following Kim’s statement, 3 agencies tasked with promoting inter-Korean reconciliation would be closed.
The country’s steady military and technological progress, coupled with its leader Kim Jong Un’s increased hostility toward foreign influences, raises concern about Pyongyang’s ambitions. As mentioned, the abandonment of unification policy towards South Korea reflects the emergence of an escalatory dynamic between the two Koreas following North Korea’s successful satellite launch last November as well as a shift in the North Korean leadership’s mindset. According to Scott Snyder, an expert on the U.S.-Korea policy, Kim may have concluded that any form of South Korean influence in the North has become significantly threatful to the regime that it is necessary to cut off all potential channels for the South’s influence, especially following the regime’s campaign to demonize foreign sway and reject external assistance during the COVID-19 pandemic.
So what does this mean for us? For now, it is impossible to know for sure what Kim plans to do next and too early to determine his ambitions. However, after Kim abandoned his country’s decades-long pursuit of peaceful unification with South Korea, longtime overseers and analysts of North Korea believe it is possible to make educated guesses on Kim’s intentions. Snyder believes that Kim wants to take advantage of rising major power rivalry, the renewal of a strategic and military relationship between North Korea and Russia, and the paralysis of the UN Security Council in limiting the prospect of international retaliation for North Korean missile testing. Through this, Kim will likely be more militant and aggressive to the extent that he perceives greater room for maneuver as he pursues provocations, especially aimed at South Korea, with relative impunity.
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