North Korean state news agency KCNA on Thursday reported for the first time that the country had revised its constitution to define South Korea as a “hostile state.”
The change took place last week at a meeting of the country’s rubber-stamp legislature. It follows a proposal from Kim Jong Un in January, but past propaganda on revisions to the constitution had offered few details.
Blowing border links was ‘inevitable and legitimate’
The new status was mentioned in a KCNA report on North Korea detonating symbolic roads and railways still linking it to the South two days earlier.
The state-controlled news agency said that the army had taken “a measure to physically cut off the DPRK’s roads and railways which lead to the ROK [South Korea]” which was “part of the phased complete separation of its territory, where its sovereignty is exercised, from the ROK’s territory.”
North Korea’s formal name is the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) and South Korea’s is the Republic of Korea (ROK).
KCNA reported that the destruction of connecting infrastructure was an “inevitable and legitimate measure taken in keeping with the requirement of the DPRK Constitution which clearly defines the ROK as a hostile state.”
North Korea’s Supreme People’s Assembly had convened last week and KCNA had made mention of amendments to the constitution without offering many details.
This passing reference on Thursday, which also went into no further detail, was its first confirmation of the change.
Worsening relations
Animosity between the two neighbors increased over the last few days when Pyongyang accused Seoul of flying drones over it three times this month, warning of military reprisals in the future.
While the South initially denied claims about the drones, it later changed tactics and refused to comment.
Moreover, Pyongyang has increased testing of nuclear-capable ballistic missiles over the last year which it says is in response to military drills and collaboration between South Korea and the nuclear-armed US.
Formally, the two countries have been in a state of war since 1950 as the Korean War concluded with an armistice rather than peace treaty in 1953.
