hankyoreh

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, who serves as head general secretary of the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea, speaks at a meeting of the party’s congress on Feb. 23, 2026. (KCNA/Yonhap)

In a report delivered at the conclusion of the 9th Congress of the Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK), North Korean leader Kim Jong-un said that “the DPRK [North Korea] has nothing to discuss with the ROK [South Korea], the most hostile entity, and will exclude the ROK from the category of compatriots forever.”

Kim’s words confirm that the narrative of the inter-Korean relationship being one between “two states hostile to each other” he first introduced in late 2023 has been endorsed by the ruling party’s congress, the country’s preeminent political event.

North Korea’s reaffirmation of this hard-line stance has essentially made it impossible for the South Korean government to achieve its goal of using Trump’s visit to China in late March or early April to improve inter-Korean relations.

Despite the undeniable bleakness of the objective circumstances, we must never give up our efforts to build trust through dialogue with North Korea.

The policies that North Korea means to adopt toward the US and South Korea are detailed very clearly in Kim’s speech, which was published in the state-run Korean Central News Agency on Feb. 26.

Kim acknowledged that “the US remains utterly unchanged in its original hostile view on the DPRK” but added that “if the US respects the present position of our state” — that is, as a nuclear weapon state — “and withdraws its hostile policy toward the DPRK, there is no reason why we cannot get on well with the US.”

As for South Korea, Kim disparaged President Lee Jae Myung’s North Korean policy as “a clumsy deceptive farce and a poor work” and emphasized that North Korea’s shift to the “two hostile states” narrative is “not a temporary tactical measure but a historic option.”

“Some people of the ROK,” Kim said, “do not abandon their wild ambition to absorb the other party in any way.” He urged South Korea “to abandon everything related to us and not to irritate us.”

Kim did not shy away from threatening to use nuclear weapons. If South Korean actions threaten North Korean security, he said, “the possibility of the ROK’s complete collapse [. . .] cannot be ruled out.”

The only conclusion that can be drawn is that North Korea has settled on the strategy of using its nuclear deterrent to survive on its own amid what it regards as a favorable geopolitical situation in which the US’ leadership is faltering and the ROK-US alliance is wavering.

Under the mantra of peaceful coexistence on the Korean Peninsula, the Lee administration has proposed the goals of instituting peaceful coexistence with North Korea, laying the foundation for mutual growth and eliminating war and nuclear weapons from the peninsula.

Lee has also taken several significant preemptive measures, such as promising to respect the North Korean regime, not to pursue “unification by absorption” and not to carry out any hostile acts.

“There’s an old saying that you can’t fill your belly with a single spoonful,” Lee said on Feb. 26, pointing to the urgent need for South Korea to keep making overtures to the North.

We need to consider our options with the awareness that results may not be immediately forthcoming.

Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]