Kim Jong Un has broken with decades of North Korean policy – does it mean he’s planning for war?

CNN —

As war in Ukraine grinds toward its third year and fighting in Gaza inflames a broader crisis across the Middle East, global security observers are keeping a close watch on another part of the world – North Korea, where Kim Jong Un’s latest provocations are raising questions about his military intentions.

In recent weeks, the leader has brushed aside decades of his country’s policy toward South Korea – now proclaiming that North Korea would no longer seek reconciliation and reunification with the South and calling for it to be classified as their “permanent enemy.”

North Korea “does not want war, but will not avoid it,” Kim declared at a political gathering last month, according to state outlet KCNA.

If war came, the country’s goal would be “occupying, suppressing and reclaiming the Republic of Korea and subjugating it into the territory of the republic,” he said, referring to South Korea by its official name.

The sweeping policy shift in the nuclear-capable country has come alongside a volley of weapons tests, the shelling of a maritime buffer zone, and calls from Kim for North Korea to accelerate war preparations in response to “confrontation moves” by the US.

Together the developments are drawing international concern – and debate among seasoned observers – about the intentions of the leader at the heart of the country’s secretive regime.

“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,’” prominent experts Robert Carlin and Siegfred Heckler wrote in North Korea-focused publication 38 North last month. Kim, they suggest, has “made a strategic decision to go to war.”

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