Kim Jong Un’s rejection of Korean reunification opens perilous new era

North Korea’s giant concrete “Arch of Reunification” depicted two women in traditional dress leaning towards each other to hold up an image of a united Korean peninsula.

But a week after North Korean leader Kim Jong Un described the 30m-tall monument as an “eyesore”, it was gone — a demolition that drove home his renunciation of his country’s long-standing commitment to eventual reunification with the South.

Kim’s dramatic policy shift this month has opened a dangerous new phase in the frozen conflict between the two Koreas, analysts say, with some even fearing that he is laying the ideological groundwork for a new war.

The break with a reunification policy that dated back to the division of the peninsula in the 1940s illustrates how Kim has been emboldened by the progress of his nuclear weapons programme, as well as his burgeoning defence co-operation with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“The situation on the Korean peninsula is more dangerous than it has been at any time since early June 1950,” veteran US diplomat Robert Carlin and nuclear scientist Siegfried Hecker wrote in a recent commentary for the Stimson Center think-tank in Washington.

“We believe that, like his grandfather in 1950, Kim Jong Un has made a strategic decision to go to war.”

For decades, Pyongyang has portrayed South Koreans as compatriots held hostage by a US-backed “puppet regime” in Seoul. The North’s sacred mission to liberate its fellow Koreans from the imperialist yoke offered its leaders legitimacy and its downtrodden subjects a sense of moral purpose.

But all that was swept away when Kim told North Korea’s rubber stamp parliament on January 16 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”.

The regime has moved swiftly to implement the new vision. Propaganda outlets directed at South Korean audiences, pro-unification organisations and state bodies for facilitating inter-Korean tourism have all been axed.

Go Myong-hyun, senior fellow at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies in Seoul, said Kim’s move was the result of disillusionment dating back to 2019, when talks collapsed with then-US president Donald Trump at their last summit in Hanoi.

“Kim hoped that a leftwing South Korean government could help convince Trump to accept the existence of North Korea’s nuclear programme in exchange for the normalisation of relations,” said Go. “But when the negotiations failed, he appears to have concluded that no South Korean government could ever be trusted.”

Rachel Minyoung Lee, a North Korea expert and fellow at the Stimson Center, said Kim was instituting a “fundamental shift in North Korea’s policy towards Seoul” after “laying the military and legal groundwork for the use of nuclear weapons against South Korea if and when needed”.

In 2021, Kim announced an acceleration of efforts to develop, test and deploy tactical nuclear weapons capable of striking South Korean targets. The following year, he revised the country’s nuclear law to allow for pre-emptive strikes in a wide range of scenarios.

Kim’s rejection of the possibility of unification through peaceful means was the logical next step, said Lee. “It is hard to justify the use of nuclear weapons against South Korea when the South remains part of the Korean nation.”

“That does not mean that Kim has taken a decision to go to war,” she added. “But his actions suggest he will be more inclined to take military action than he was in the past.”

The US in 2022 warned Pyongyang that “any nuclear attack by North Korea against the United States or its allies and partners is unacceptable and will result in the end of that regime”.

That threat was reiterated by South Korea’s defence minister Shin Won-sik on January 24. “North Korea has defined [South Korea] as its principal enemy,” he told fighter pilots, according to the state news agency.

“If the Kim Jong Un regime opts for the worst choice of waging war, you should be at the vanguard of removing the enemy’s leadership at the earliest possible time,” Shin said.

Some observers worry an escalating war of words, coupled with the collapse of military confidence-building measures last year, could soon spill over into armed clashes between the Koreas.

North Korea early this month fired more than 200 artillery shells near a maritime buffer zone between the Koreas, prompting South Korea to fire more than 400 shells during “corresponding” drills.

Seoul’s response was consistent with its doctrine of “punishment and retaliation” to North Korean “provocations”. Last month, Shin called on South Korean sailors to “mercilessly bury” their North Korean adversaries in the event of an attack.

“The South Korean government is goading Kim Jong Un to fight,” said Chun In-bum, a retired lieutenant general and former commander of the South Korean special forces. “But if you dare someone like Kim, then eventually he is going to accept.”

Sydney Seiler, who served as the US national intelligence officer for North Korea in the Biden administration between 2020 and 2023, said that while the Korean peninsula was entering “rough waters”, the “fundamental nature of the conflict has not changed”.

“We have seen incidents as recently as 2010 and 2015 in which the North Korean armed forces killed South Korean sailors, marines, and civilians, but which still didn’t lead to war,” said Seiler. “The question is whether we now see concrete actions that take us in a dangerous new direction where de-escalation is more complicated.”

More concerning, he added, was the possibility North Korea would start to use the threat of its expanding nuclear arsenal to try to extract concessions or even an eventual capitulation from Seoul.

“As Kim’s military programme grows both qualitatively and quantitively, the more offensive or coercive options become available to him,” said Seiler, now a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

“He may not have decided what he is going to do, or when. But people are finally starting to realise that the North Koreans have not been seeking nuclear weapons all this time purely for defensive purposes.”