North Korean leader Kim Jong Un says reunification with South Korea is no longer possible and reconciliation on the Korean peninsula won’t be pursued any longer, state media reported Tuesday.
The state-run KCNA news agency said Pyongyang will abolish government agencies managing relations with Seoul and that Kim had called for a change to North Korea’s constitution to recognize South Korea as its “primary foe and principal enemy.” He also said the new constitution should confirm that, in the event of war, North Korea will pursue “occupying, subjugating, and reclaiming” the South.
Kim further demanded that the previous symbols of reconciliation between the two countries should be removed to “completely eliminate such concepts as ‘reunification,’ ‘reconciliation’ and ‘fellow countrymen’ from the national history of our republic,” the Associated Press reports.
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He specifically called for cross-border railway sections to be severed and demanded that a Pyongyang monument honoring the ideal of reunification be torn down, deriding the landmark as an eyesore.
“It is the final conclusion drawn from the bitter history of the inter-Korean relations that we cannot go along the road of national restoration and reunification together,” Kim said.
