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North Korean leader Kim Jong-un speaks at the ninth enlarged plenary meeting of the eighth Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea, on Dec. 30, 2023. (KCNA/Yonhap)

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un declared on Saturday that inter-Korean relations “have been completely fixed into the relations between two states hostile to each other and the relations between two belligerent states, not the consanguineous or homogeneous ones any more.”

On Sunday, the state-run Korean Central News Agency published remarks made by Kim one day prior during an enlarged plenary meeting of the Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK) Central Committee, which ran from Dec. 26-30.

He was quoted as saying, “The general conclusion drawn by our Party, looking back upon the long-standing north-south relations is that reunification can never be achieved with the [South Korean] authorities that defined the ‘unification by absorption’ and ‘unification under liberal democracy’ as their state policy, which is in sharp contradiction with our line of national reunification based on one nation and one state with two systems.”

Analysts read these remarks as signaling that Kim is pursuing a “two-Korea” future rather than one of reunification, while repudiating the framework of a reunification-oriented “special interim relationship” that has governed all aspects of inter-Korean relations in the past.

“The puppet forces’ sinister ambition to destroy our social system and regime has remained unchanged even a bit whether they advocated ‘democracy’ or disguised themselves as ‘conservatism,’” Kim was quoted as saying.

“The reality urgently requires us to adopt a new stand on the north-south relations and the reunification policy,” he continued.

KCNA explained, “The conclusion put forward the line of making a fundamental turnabout in the sector of work toward the south on the basis of a cool analysis of the bitter history of the north-south relations.”

Kim also pledged to strengthen the North’s nuclear capabilities and launch three additional military reconnaissance satellites in the new year.

Kim stressed that the Korean People’s Army should “rapidly respond to any possible nuclear crisis and put continuous spurs to the preparations for a great event to suppress the whole territory of south Korea by mobilizing all physical means and forces including nuclear forces in contingency.”

The South Korean government responded Monday in a statement from the Ministry of National Defense which said North Korea had “done nothing more than to consistently show the characteristics of a hereditary dictatorship that sacrifices everything for the sake of the succession of power and retention of its regime.”

It also gave its “stern warning” that it would “overwhelmingly retaliate with the use of the extended deterrence and three-axis system of a South Korea-US alliance that has been historically strengthened,” which would result in the “Kim Jong-un regime coming to an end.”

By Jang Ye-ji, staff reporter; Kwon Hyuk-chul, staff reporter

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