Beyond firing artillery rounds into the sea and launching spy satellites, North Korea has been busy removing references and images of reunification with South Korea from its state-run websites, creating alarm among experts.
The moves are the latest concrete evidence that the country’s leader, Kim Jong Un, might be implementing a pledge made in January where he called South Korea a “primary foe” and concluded that reunification was no longer possible.
Pyongyang’s decision to abandon the decades-long goal of reunification — in addition to rekindled relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin — has contributed to escalating tensions on the Korean Peninsula, to a degree that has some experts tabling the possibility that conflict might be imminent.
Here’s a look at what’s led to the current situation, how experts are interpreting the shifts in rhetoric amid the current global context, and whether or not yet another conflict might genuinely be on the brink of breaking out.
What has been going on？
The initial bombshell came when Mr Kim called for a rewriting of the country’s constitution to eliminate the idea of a peaceful reunification with South Korea — and to cement Seoul as an “invariable principal enemy” — in a speech to the Supreme People’s Assembly earlier this year.
During his speech, Mr Kim blamed South Korea and the United States for raising tensions in the region, citing their expanded joint military exercises, deployments of US strategic military assets, and their trilateral security cooperation with Japan as turning the peninsula into a dangerous war-prone zone.
Following Mr Kim’s speech, the North’s assembly abolished key government agencies that have been instrumental to decades of exchanges with Seoul.
Satellite imagery of Pyongyang showed that a major monument in the capital that symbolised the goal of reconciliation with South Korea was destroyed after the speech.
South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency reported that articles containing unification references have consistently been removed from North Korea’s platforms and messaging: for example, a red-coloured logo of the Korean Peninsula has been removed from the North’s official Foreign Trade site banners.
Mr Kim’s remarks were made amid escalating tensions on the peninsula.
Since January, the North has fired hundreds of artillery shells into the sea near the disputed maritime border with the South and tested what it said was a solid-fuel missile fitted with a hypersonic warhead.
Last month, the North’s state media reported that the Supreme People’s Assembly had voted to scrap all agreements with its neighbour aimed at promoting economic cooperation.
South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol criticised this move to define his country as hostile, saying it showed Pyongyang’s “anti-national and ahistorical” nature.
Seoul has also ramped up joint military exercises with Japan and the US focused on countering the North’s potential use of nuclear weapons, which Mr Kim has portrayed as invasion rehearsals.
What’s the significance and how are experts interpreting it?
Since the 1950-53 Korean War ended in a stalemate, both Koreas have had policies that treat each other differently than other countries.
That included relying on special agencies and ministries for inter-Korean relations rather than their foreign ministries, and embracing policies for a future peaceful reunification, usually envisioning a single state with two systems.
Colin Alexander, a senior lecturer of political communication at Nottingham Trent University, said scrapping the rhetoric of reunification is a “strategic observation the North has made about politics in the South”.
“South Korea has oscillated between being more inclined towards reunification and [then] moving really far away from it,” he said.
While South Korea’s former president Moon Jae-In pushed for greater dialogue with the North, the current conservative government led by Mr Yoon took a much harder stance towards its neighbour.
“My interpretation is that North Korea is interpreting this inconsistency with a lot of frustration … and what they realise is [reunification] is so unachievable within the present outlook, that they must move towards a policy which is more realistic.”
Ankit Panda, an expert with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, also recently said that the North has been recalibrating its regional approach since the collapse of the 2019 Hanoi summit.
“But now, with advanced nuclear and missile capabilities — and the support of Russia and China — Mr Kim feels confident enough to make these changes, which amount to his most consequential proclamations on external affairs since taking power in North Korea,” Mr Panda said.
Russia and North Korea have forged closer ties since Mr Kim and Mr Putin met in September last year and pledged to promote exchanges in all areas as their respective international isolation has deepened over Russia’s war in Ukraine and the North’s ongoing nuclear weapons developments.
As a symbol of their rekindled ties, Mr Putin recently gifted Mr Kim with a Russian-made Aurus luxury limousine — the same type of car Mr Putin is often seen riding around in himself.
Could the situation lead to war?
Rising tensions between Pyongyang and Seoul have led many experts to scramble to speculate over the last few months on what sorts of scenarios may lie ahead.
In a report published on the US-based 38 North project, former State Department official Robert Carlin and nuclear scientist Siegfried Hecker said the situation on the peninsula was “more dangerous than it has been at any time since early June 1950”, shortly before the start of the Korean War.
The authors added in no uncertain terms that they believe Mr Kim “has made a strategic decision to go to war” and that “the danger is already far beyond the routine warnings in Washington, Seoul and Tokyo about Pyongyang’s ‘provocations'”.
Hong Min, a senior researcher at the Korea Institute for National Unification in Seoul, added that the policy changes could be perceived as helping North Korea justify using nuclear weapons against the South, as it has increasingly threatened in recent years.
“If they give up on peaceful unification and redefine South Korea as a hostile enemy country with no diplomatic relations, the contradiction of using nuclear weapons against the same people will be eliminated,” Mr Hong said.
But other analysts, as well as officials in Washington and Seoul, say they have spotted no serious signs Pyongyang intends to take imminent military action.
For example, South Korean Defence Minister Shin Won-sik wrote off the claims of increasing risk of war during a recent radio interview as “excessive exaggeration”, adding that such interpretations play into the hands of North Korea’s psychological warfare.
Dr Alexander added that Mr Kim’s war threats should also be understood in the context of the North’s culture where “national prestige is built around military issues”.
“Because of this propaganda concept North Korean government created domestically, it leads them to having to consistently discuss the military and its readiness [for war].”
But North Korea does not have a “rationale” to actually start a war, Dr Alexander said.
“[Because] If North Korea were to attack the South or anywhere else, there will be significant negative consequences for it.”
ABC/wires