North’s Kim seeks constitutional change to re-define ties with South Korea

ISTANBUL

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has sought changes in the country’s constitution to re-define relations with South Korea.

Kim made the proposal during an address to North Korea’s Supreme People's Assembly on Monday, according to Pyongyang-based KCNA.

“We cannot go along the road of national restoration and reunification together with the ROK (Republic of Korea) clan that adopted as its state policy the all-out confrontation with our Republic, dreaming of the ‘collapse of our government’ and ‘unification by absorption’,” Kim told the country’s lawmakers, referring to South Korea by its official name.

KIm is not a deputy of the Assembly.

He said Seoul had “lost compatriotic consciousness, getting more vicious and arrogant in the madcap confrontational racket.”

Kim’s high pitch address to the lawmakers comes amid persistent tensions on Korean Peninsula, which resulted due to reciprocal military activities by the divided Koreas where the US and Japan have also held joint military drills with Seoul.

“The north-south 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 anymore,” Kim said, proposing “necessary” revision of North Korea’s constitution.

At the ongoing session of the Assembly, Kim said Pyongyang has “formulated a new stand” on the north-south relations and the policy of reunification and “dismantled all the organizations” that were established as “solidarity bodies for peaceful reunification.”

Emphasizing that the so-called "northern limit line" in shared waters can “never be tolerated,” Kim warned any violation of North Korea’s territorial land, air and waters, “will be considered a war provocation.”

“It is necessary to take legal steps to legitimately and correctly define the territorial sphere where the sovereignty of the DPRK as an independent socialist nation is exercised,” Kim told the lawmakers, using official name of North Korea.

“We can specify in our constitution the issue of completely occupying, subjugating and reclaiming the ROK and annex it as a part of the territory of our Republic in case of a war breaks out on the Korean peninsula,” Kim said, urging the lawmakers to re-define South Korea as “primary foe and invariable principal enemy.”

Seoul reacts

Reacting to the new proposal of re-defining relations with Seoul, South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol said his government “is different from any previous government.”

“Our military has an overwhelming response capability. ... Should North Korea provoke us, we will punish them multiple times as hard,” Yoon told a Cabinet meeting.