North Korean leader Kim Jong-un threatened South Korea with war if “even 0.001mm” of the North’s territory is violated, as Pyongyang abolished agencies that oversaw cooperation and reunification, state media said yesterday.
Kim also said Pyongyang would not recognize the two nations’ de facto maritime border, the Northern Limit Line, and called for constitutional changes allowing North Korea to “occupy” Seoul in war, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said.
In Seoul, South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol told his Cabinet that should nuclear-armed North Korea carry out a provocation, South Korea would hit back with a response “multiple times stronger,” pointing to his military’s “overwhelming response capabilities.”
Photo: KCNA via Reuters
The hawkish rhetoric on both sides of the border follows a sharp deterioration of inter-Korean ties, with Pyongyang’s spy satellite launch in November last year prompting Seoul to partially suspend a 2018 military agreement aimed at defusing tensions.
Pyongyang’s decision to jettison the agencies charged with overseeing cooperation and reunification with South Korea was announced by North Korea’s rubber-stamp parliament, KCNA said, part of a string of measures that have escalated tensions, including live-fire artillery drills and missile launches.
In a speech delivered at the Supreme People’s Assembly, Kim called for the drawing up of new legal measures to define South Korea as “the most hostile state,” KCNA reported.
“In my opinion, we can specify in our constitution the issue of completely occupying, subjugating and reclaiming the ROK [Republic of Korea] and annex it as a part of the territory of our Republic in case a war breaks out on the Korean Peninsula,” Kim said.
“If the Republic of Korea violates even 0.001mm of our territorial land, air and waters, it will be considered a war provocation,” he said.
The decision comes shortly after Kim labeled South Korea the “principal enemy” and stated that continuing to seek reconciliation was a “mistake.”
In their constitutions, both North and South Korea claim sovereignty over the whole of the Korean Peninsula.
The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and the Republic of Korea — the North and South’s official names — were founded 75 years ago, but still technically regard each other as illegal entities.
Until now, what passed for diplomatic relations were handled by the South Korean Ministry of Unification and the North Korean Committee for Peaceful Reunification — one of the agencies the Supreme People’s Assembly has now declared abolished.
Cho Han-bum, a researcher at the Seoul-based Korea Institute for National Unification, said that the North Korean system has long been grounded on the idea of reunification, an unachieved wish of the nation’s founding leader and Kim’s grandfather, Kim Il-sung.
“Now he is denying everything that his predecessors have done,” Cho said.
Pyongyang might be engaging in “mirror imaging,” responding to Seoul’s adjustments to the mission of the unification ministry to focus more on human rights issues.
“The Kim (Jong-un] regime is taking disproportionate steps in dismantling its inter-Korean organizations and formalizing a hostile policy line toward the South,” he said.
AIR SUPPORT: The Ministry of National Defense thanked the US for the delivery, adding that it was an indicator of the White House’s commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act Deputy Minister of National Defense Po Horng-huei (柏鴻輝) and Representative to the US Alexander Yui on Friday attended a delivery ceremony for the first of Taiwan’s long-awaited 66 F-16C/D Block 70 jets at a Lockheed Martin Corp factory in Greenville, South Carolina. “We are so proud to be the global home of the F-16 and to support Taiwan’s air defense capabilities,” US Representative William Timmons wrote on X, alongside a photograph of Taiwanese and US officials at the event. The F-16C/D Block 70 jets Taiwan ordered have the same capabilities as aircraft that had been upgraded to F-16Vs. The batch of Lockheed Martin
GRIDLOCK: The National Fire Agency’s Special Search and Rescue team is on standby to travel to the countries to help out with the rescue effort A powerful earthquake rocked Myanmar and neighboring Thailand yesterday, killing at least three people in Bangkok and burying dozens when a high-rise building under construction collapsed. Footage shared on social media from Myanmar’s second-largest city showed widespread destruction, raising fears that many were trapped under the rubble or killed. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake, with an epicenter near Mandalay in Myanmar, struck at midday and was followed by a strong magnitude 6.4 aftershock. The extent of death, injury and destruction — especially in Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war and where information is tightly controlled at the best of times —
Taiwan was ranked the fourth-safest country in the world with a score of 82.9, trailing only Andorra, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar in Numbeo’s Safety Index by Country report. Taiwan’s score improved by 0.1 points compared with last year’s mid-year report, which had Taiwan fourth with a score of 82.8. However, both scores were lower than in last year’s first review, when Taiwan scored 83.3, and are a long way from when Taiwan was named the second-safest country in the world in 2021, scoring 84.8. Taiwan ranked higher than Singapore in ninth with a score of 77.4 and Japan in 10th with
SECURITY RISK: If there is a conflict between China and Taiwan, ‘there would likely be significant consequences to global economic and security interests,’ it said China remains the top military and cyber threat to the US and continues to make progress on capabilities to seize Taiwan, a report by US intelligence agencies said on Tuesday. The report provides an overview of the “collective insights” of top US intelligence agencies about the security threats to the US posed by foreign nations and criminal organizations. In its Annual Threat Assessment, the agencies divided threats facing the US into two broad categories, “nonstate transnational criminals and terrorists” and “major state actors,” with China, Russia, Iran and North Korea named. Of those countries, “China presents the most comprehensive and robust military threat