The always hermetic regime of North Korea has approved this week a reform of the Constitution that predictably omits references to reunification with South Korea in addition to a redefinition of national borders. The changes had been requested in Parliament by the supreme leader, Kim Jong-un, in January, when he requested, instead of this reunification, that the constitutional text include the idea “of completely occupying, subjugating and claiming” South Korea and ” annex it” in case a war broke out on the peninsula. The Supreme People’s Assembly, as expected, “unanimously” approved the constitutional amendments during the session held between Monday and Tuesday of this week, according to the North Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), which has not, however, specified the details or what these reforms consist of. This reform coincides with the change in the Ministry of Defense. No Kwang Chol will take charge again to replace his current incumbent, Kang Sun Nam.
Analysts had warned that the constitutional modification indicated by Kim in January could strain the already very complicated relationship with the southern neighbor, a country with which it is still virtually at war (1950-1953) because a peace treaty has never been signed. and further strain the atmosphere in the Asia-Pacific region, with multiple sources of instability ranging from Taiwan to the Philippines. When requesting the changes, Kim said in January: “[El] “The danger of a war breaking out caused by a physical clash has considerably worsened and has reached a red line.” The North Korean leader then stated that he was not looking for a war, but he also had no “intention to avoid it.”
The rhetoric remains heated. “Our progress towards a military superpower, a nuclear power, will be increasingly rapid,” the supreme leader said this Monday, the same day that Parliament began its session, in a speech given before the National Defense University in Pyongyang. In it he charged against what he considers his two great enemies, Washington and Seoul: “In front of us we have the largest nuclear power in the world and the fiercest of its puppets trying to deceive with their nuclear weapons.” Kim again mentioned the possibility of a conflagration, but to clarify that he has no intention of starting one. “I have clearly and consistently put the precondition of the word ‘if’ whenever I have clarified our position on the use of military force,” he said. “If the enemy attempts to resort to weapons against our State, the armed forces of our Republic will use all attack capabilities without hesitation.” This, he added, included the use of nuclear weapons.
North Korea has not carried out any atomic bomb test since 2017, but in mid-September it displayed nuclear muscle with the first images of facilities to enrich uranium and Kim’s call to “exponentially increase self-defense nuclear weapons” to confront threats from “vassal forces led by American imperialists.”
The North Korean army has also announced that it will completely cut off roads and railways connected to South Korea starting this Wednesday, and will fortify areas on its side of the border, according to the state agency KCNA, which heralds a new escalation of activity near the demarcation line that separates both countries. It is unclear, however, to what extent it will affect tense relations, given that cross-border movements and exchanges have been suspended for several years. Pyongyang has assured that it is a response to military exercises by its southern neighbor.
The constitutional modifications and the atomic and war rhetoric also coincide with a time in which North Korea has strengthened ties with Russia, to which it allegedly provides war supplies for its invasion of Ukraine in exchange for transfers of military technology. Kim and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, sealed a pact in June that involves mutual defense in the event of aggression, and does not exclude military-technical cooperation, according to the Russian leader at the time.
The relationship between the Moscow-Pyongyang axis remains in an idyll phase. “I reaffirm our full and selfless support and solidarity with the just cause of the army and people of Russia,” Kim confided to Putin this Monday in a congratulatory message for his birthday. “Here’s to your good health and greater success in your work. […] “Pyongyang will always be at Moscow’s side,” according to KCNA. The South Korean Government also suspects that “it is very possible” that there are already North Korean soldiers deployed on the Ukrainian front fighting alongside the Russians, South Korean Defense Minister Kim Yong-hyun said on Tuesday.
Earlier this year, two of the most reputable analysts on North Korea wrote a controversial article in which they stated that the situation is “more dangerous than at any time since early June 1950,” when the Korean War began. In his opinion, Kim has made the strategic decision to “go to war.” The signatories were Robert L. Carlin, among other things, former head of the Northeast Asia division of the Bureau of Intelligence and Research of the US State Department, where he participated in the negotiations between Washington and Pyongyang, and Siegfried S. Hecker, scientist who has directed the Los Alamos National Laboratory, where the atomic bomb was developed, and one of the few who has had access to North Korean atomic facilities. Other analysts, however, called the article alarmist and exaggerated, but they did warn of a possible deterioration in the situation.