North Korea will no longer seek reconciliation and reunification with South Korea, Kim Jong Un has declared, as his nation vowed to put three new military spy satellites into orbit in 2024. <\/p>\n
Kim said inter-Korean relations had become \u201ca relationship between two hostile countries and two belligerents at war,\u201d the state-run news agency KCNA reported. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s time for us to acknowledge the reality and clarify our relationship with the South,\u201d Kim said, adding that if Washington and Seoul were to attempt a military confrontation with Pyongyang, its \u201cnuclear war deterrent will not hesitate to take serious action.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cI believe that it is a mistake that we must no longer make to deal with the people who declare us as \u2018the main enemy\u2019 and seek only opportunities for \u2018[our] regime collapse\u2019 and \u2018unification by absorption\u2019 by collaborating for reconciliation and unification,\u201d Kim added. <\/p>\n
North and South Korea have been cut off from each other since the end of the Korean War in 1953 which ended with an armistice. The two sides are still technically at war, but both governments have long sought the goal of one day reunifying. <\/p>\n
Relations have ebbed and flowed over the decades, but tensions have remained particularly high in more recent years after Kim Jong Un ramped up the country\u2019s nuclear weapons program in defiance of international sanctions. <\/p>\n
Last week, KCNA reported that Kim had instructed the country\u2019s army, munitions industry, nuclear weapons and civil defense sectors to accelerate war preparations in response to \u201cconfrontation moves\u201d by the US. <\/p>\n
At the time, KCNA described the political and military situation on the Korean Peninsula as \u201cgrave,\u201d saying it had reached an \u201cextreme\u201d point because of Washington. <\/p>\n
Kim\u2019s latest comments on reunification were significant, according to Hoo Chiew-Ping, a senior fellow at the East Asian International Relations CAUCUS (EAIR) and member of the Asia Pacific Nuclear Advisory Panel (APNAP), who said the North Korean leader has been increasingly walking away from \u201cinter-Korean relations\u201d in recent years. <\/p>\n
Pyongyang was keener to further relations instead with current allies like \u201cChina and Russia, and a selected network of countries around the world which will continue to enable its proliferation and financial outreach,\u201d she added. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe US, South Korea and Japan are excluded\u00a0from Kim\u2019s strategic outreach for now.\u201d <\/p>\n
Ja Ian Chong, an associate professor of political science and nonresident scholar at Carnegie China, said Kim\u2019s speech \u201creflects the reality that unification is not a short or even medium-term possibility (for the Koreas).\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cGiven this situation, the question is whether non-unification means continuation of the status quo or if North Korea believes it needs to act to protect itself more actively, or even preempt what it sees as possible aggression from South Korea,\u201d Chong added. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe former is tolerable even as North Korea seeks to increase its defensive capability, since it keeps the status quo and is better than some belief in armed unification. If the latter, then friction and even tensions with South Korea and northeast Asia will likely rise,\u201d he warned. <\/p>\n
Kim and Chinese leader Xi Jinping exchanged New Year\u2019s messages on Monday, with both pledging to deepen ties in a \u201cyear of China-DPRK friendship,\u201d according to KCNA. DPRK is the abbreviation of the Democratic People\u2019s Republic of Korea, the official name of North Korea. <\/p>\n
In his letter to Xi, Kim said the two countries will \u201cfurther promote exchange and visits in all fields, including politics, economy and culture, further deepen the ties of friendship and unity and intensify the cooperation in the joint struggle to safeguard regional and global peace and stability\u201d throughout the year, according to KCNA. <\/p>\n
In his\u00a0message\u00a0to Kim, Xi said that relations between the two countries\u00a0had \u201cdeepened practical cooperation,\u201d maintained \u201cclose strategic communication,\u201d and entered\u00a0\u201ca new historical period,\u201d according to\u00a0China\u2019s Foreign Ministry. <\/p>\n
After repeated failures, North Korea in November said it had put its first spy satellite into orbit. <\/p>\n
Analysts said if the spacecraft works, it could provide significantly improve North Korea\u2019s military capabilities, including enabling it to more accurately target opponents\u2019 forces. <\/p>\n
Kim hailed the feat, celebrating with workers at the launch site according to images put out by state media. South Korea called\u00a0the launch a \u201cclear violation\u201d of a UN Security Council resolution that prohibits North Korea from using ballistic missile technology. <\/p>\n
On Sunday KCNA said North Korea plans to bolster that program with three additional spy satellites in the new year. <\/p>\n
\u201cBased on the experience of successfully launching and operating the first reconnaissance satellite in 2023, the task of launching three additional reconnaissance satellites in 2024 was declared to vigorously promote the development of space science and technology,\u201d the statement read. <\/p>\n
Throughout the course of 2023, Pyongyang also launched a series of intercontinental ballistic missiles tests, including a long-range solid-fueled missile called the Hwasong-18 in December, which defense experts and regional watchers says showed a \u201cmaturing\u201d North Korean missile program. <\/p>\n
North Korea\u2019s testing and strong rhetoric may be playing into Washington\u2019s hands, said Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha University in Seoul. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe North Korean threat is motivating greater trilateral cooperation among the US, Japan, and South Korea, including real-time sharing of missile tracking data. Officials in Seoul knew this ICBM test was coming, and had coordinated in advance with partners in Washington and Tokyo,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n\n
North Korea will no longer seek reconciliation and reunification with South Korea, Kim Jong Un has declared, as his nation vowed to put three new military spy satellites into orbit in 2024. Kim said inter-Korean relations had become \u201ca relationship between two hostile countries and two belligerents at war,\u201d the state-run news agency KCNA reported. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":13467,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-13466","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13466","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13466"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13466\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13467"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}