Kim Jong Un Issues War Threats and Demands A Change In South Korea’s Status
Seoul: North Korean leader Kim Jong Un cautioned that while his nation doesn’t desire conflict, it didn’t plan to avoid it on Monday when he asked for a constitutional reform to alter South Korea’s status as a distinct state, according to official media KCNA on Tuesday.
In a speech to the rubber-stamp parliament of North Korea, the Supreme People’s Assembly, Kim said that he had come to the ultimate judgment that unification with the South was no longer feasible. He also accused Seoul of pursuing unification via absorption and regime collapse.
“We don’t want war but we have no intention of avoiding it,” Kim was reported as saying by KCNA.
State media said that three agencies pertaining to unification and inter-Korean tourism will close.
The action was taken in response to growing tensions on the Korean Peninsula brought on by a number of missile launches and Pyongyang’s determination to defy decades of established policy and alter its relations with South Korea.
According to analysts, North Korea’s foreign ministry may assume control of ties with Seoul and perhaps contribute to the justification of using nuclear weapons against South Korea in a future conflict.
Nuclear physicist Siegfried Hecker and former State Department official Robert Carlin said last week in research for the U.S.-based 38 North project that they believe the situation on the Korean Peninsula is more hazardous now than it has been since early June 1950.
“That may sound overly dramatic, but we believe that, like his grandfather in 1950, Kim Jong Un has made a strategic decision to go to war,” they said. “We do not know when or how Kim plans to pull the trigger, but the danger is already far beyond the routine warnings in Washington, Seoul, and Tokyo about Pyongyang’s ‘provocations.'”
However, other commentators have expressed more optimism, stating that the changes only reflect reality and might ultimately aid in the normalization of ties between the two Koreas.
