Kim Jong Un abandons aim of unification with South Korea

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North Korea is to drop from its constitution its commitment to unification with South Korea, in a historic break with a decades-long policy amid mounting military tensions on the Korean peninsula.

Kim told North Korea’s Supreme People’s Assembly on Monday that South Korea was his country’s “principal enemy” and its citizens should no longer be regarded as “fellow countrymen” as he ordered officials to close state agencies dedicated to unification and inter-Korean tourism.

“The expressions ‘northern half’ and ‘independent, peaceful unification, and great national unity’ in our constitution should now be deleted,” Kim said, according to state media.

“The reality is that the North-South relationship is no longer a relationship of kinship or homogeneity, but a relationship of two hostile countries, a complete relationship of two belligerents in the midst of war,” he added.

He also called for the dismantling of an “eyesore” monument in Pyongyang that promotes inter-Korean unity.

After decades of occupation by Japan, the division of the Korean peninsula at the end of the second world war was cemented by the establishment of a pro-Soviet regime in the north and a pro-US regime in the south.

The Korean states, which remain in a state of war after a 1953 armistice that halted hostilities, have both maintained an official commitment to reunification. But last month, Kim announced that his regime’s decades-old unification policy of “one nation, one state with two systems” was no longer realistic.

Jeongmin Kim, an analyst at Seoul-based information service NK Pro, said the North Korean leader was trying to resolve a “tricky ideological contradiction” between his…