N Korea’s transformation on reunification marks paradigm shift

Late 2023 marked a notable transformation in North Korea’s long-standing pursuit of peaceful reunification with South Korea after North Korean leader Kim Jong Un noted the failure of the policy in his end-of-year speech.

This sentiment was reiterated during a January 15 meeting of North Korea’s Supreme People’s Assembly (SPA), where the country’s constitution was ordered to be rewritten to label South Korea as its “principal adversary.”

Subsequently, public symbols promoting peaceful reunification in North Korea were dismantled and references to it were deleted on state media outlets.

Additionally, three inter-Korean cooperation organizations – the Korean People’s Cooperation Administration, Kumgangsan International Tourism Administration, and the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland – were abolished, accompanied by an increase in North Korean missile tests.

Several North Korea experts, including former US State Department official Robert L Carlin and nuclear scientist Siegfried S Hecker, have sounded the alarm about the growing potential for conflict.

Armed with nuclear weapons and emboldened by challenges to US power in Ukraine and the Middle East, Pyongyang might see this as an opportune moment for large-scale aggression. However, the North Korean leadership may believe that abandoning reunification while avoiding war could bolster its autonomy by freeing it from the democratization constraints linked to the reunification process.

North Korea explored various avenues for peaceful reunification in the decades following the Korean War, including Kim Il Sung’s Three Principles of National Reunification in 1972.

The 1980s saw more substantive ideas emerge. North Korea’s “Democratic Confederal