Kim a mortal menace or playing mind games?

This is part one in a two-part series on the implications of North Korea’s recent official change of stance toward South Korea, and is adapted from the author’s recent chapterin Comparative Connections: A Triannual E-journal of Bilateral Relations in the Indo-Pacific.

Kim Jong Un elaborated on his radical new line on South Korea to the Supreme People’s Assembly (SPA) in January. It sounded just as nasty as when he first expounded it in December, but no more coherent.

While awaiting further specification in a promised constitutional amendment, our provisional assessment is that this is more bark than bite. While vigilance and deterrence remain crucial, this does not look like a peninsula on the brink of war.

Kim’s new stance on South Korea

On its face, the new stand toward South Korea announced by Kim Jong Un at the end of 2023, and further adumbrated by him later in mid-January, upends Pyongyang’s entire past policy – which means repudiating the legacies of his grandfather and father.

Following a review of how party and state policies were implemented in the old year, Kim turned to the new one. Earlier Kim had laid out the usual DPRK perspective.

He spoke of “the dangerous security environment in the Korean peninsula on the brink of a nuclear war,” saying that “the US and its vassal forces have still perpetrated vicious anti-DPRK confrontational moves [and are] openly talking about ‘end of regime’ in the DPRK.”

Beyond such generalities, a wealth of detail on specific US and alliance developments showed how Pyongyang pays close attention to the moves of its foes. Kim’s conclusion: “The word ‘war’ is already approaching us as a realistic entity, not as an abstract concept.”

Naturally, Kim also blasted “the anti-DPRK