North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. File
| Photo Credit: AP

North Korea said on Wednesday (October 9, 2024) it will permanently block its border with South Korea and boost its frontline defence posture to cope with “confrontational hysteria” by South Korean and U.S. forces, while not announcing an expected constitutional revision to formally designate South Korea its principal enemy and codify new national borders.

While the moves were likely a pressure tactic, it’s unclear how they will affect ties with South Korea since cross-border travel and exchanges have been halted for years.

North Korea’s Kim threatens to destroy South Korea with nuclear strikes if provoked

North Korea’s military said it will “completely cut off roads and railways” linked to South Korea and “fortify the relevant areas of our side with strong defence structures,” according to the North’s official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA.)

The North’s military called its steps a “self-defensive measure for inhibiting war and defending the security” of North Korea. It said that “the hostile forces are getting ever more reckless in their confrontational hysteria.” It cited what it called various war exercises in South Korea, the deployment of U.S. strategic assets and its rivals’ harsh rhetoric.

North Korea said it sent a message to the U.S. military to explain its fortification activity to prevent any misjudgment and potential accidental clashes.

South Korea’s Defence Ministry said it confirmed the North Korean message with the American-led U.N. Command. It said South Korea is closely communicating and coordinating with the U.N. Command but didn’t elaborate.

South Korean officials earlier said North Korea had already been adding anti-tank barriers and reinforcing roads on its side of the border since April in a likely attempt to boost its frontline security posture and prevent its soldiers and citizens from defecting to South Korea. In a report to Parliament on Tuesday (October 8, 2024), South Korea’s Unification Ministry said North Korea has been removing ties on the northern side of cross-border railways and nearby lamps and planting mines along the border.

KCNA on Wednesday (October 9, 2024) said the Supreme People’s Assembly met for two days this week to amend the legal ages of North Koreans for working and participating in elections. But it didn’t say whether the meeting dealt with leader Kim Jong Un’s order in January to rewrite the constitution to remove the goal of a peaceful Korean unification, formally designate South Korea as the country’s “invariable principal enemy” and define the North’s sovereign, territorial sphere.

At the centre of outside attention was whether North Korea makes new legal claims on the waters currently controlled by South Korea off their west coast. The poorly marked western sea boundary is where three bloody naval skirmishes and two deadly attacks blamed on North Korea happened in the past 25 years.

Some experts say North Korea might have delayed the constitutional revision but others speculated it amended the constitution without announcing it because of its sensitivity.

Mr. Kim’s order stunned many North Korea watchers because it was seen as breaking away with his predecessors’ long-cherished dreams of achieving a unified Korea on the North’s terms. Experts say Mr. Kim likely aims to diminish South Korea’s voice in the regional nuclear standoff and seek direct dealings with the U.S. They say Kim also likely hopes to diminish South Korean cultural influence and bolster his rule at home.

Tensions on the Korean Peninsula are at their highest point in years, with North Korea continuing a run of provocative weapons tests and South Korea and the U.S. expanding their military drills. KCNA said North Korea on Tuesday (October 8, 2024) tested a long-range artillery system that observers say pose a direct threat to Seoul, the South Korean capital, which is only an hour’s drive from the border.

Kim Yo Jong. File
| Photo Credit: AP

The sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un called South Korea’s recent front-line live-fire drills “suicidal hysteria” as she threatened unspecified military steps on July 8 if further provoked.

The warning by Kim Yo Jong came after South Korea resumed firing exercises near its tense land and sea borders with North Korea in the past two weeks. The exercises were the first of their kind since South Korea suspended a 2018 agreement with the North aimed at easing front-line military tensions in June.

“The question is why the enemy kicked off such war drills near the border, suicidal hysteria, for which they will have to sustain terrible disaster,” Kim Yo Jong said in a statement carried by state media.

She accused South Korea’s conservative government of deliberately escalating tensions as a way to escape a domestic political crisis. She said the riskiness of the South Korean drills is clear to everyone as they happened amid “a touch-and-go situation” established after the U.S., South Korea and Japan recently held a new trilateral military exercise that North Korea views as a security threat.

“In case it is judged according to our criteria that they violated the sovereignty of (North Korea) and committed an act tantamount to a declaration of war, our armed forces will immediately carry out its mission and duty assigned by the (North Korean) constitution,” she said, without elaborating.

Later on Monday, Koo Byoungsam, a spokesperson at South Korea’s Unification Ministry, described Kim’s statement as an attempt to trigger an internal divide in South Korea, saying that North Korea must first look at its own human rights violations and the international isolation caused by its nuclear programme.

South Korea’s Defence Ministry separately said it will continue its live-fire drills as scheduled but didn’t say when and where new exercises are planned.

North Korea has been engaged in a provocative run of weapons tests since 2022. But its two recent tests — one on a missile with “a super-large warhead” and the other on a multiwarhead missile — drew widespread skepticism from South Korean officials and experts who said North Korea likely fabricated successful launches to cover up failed tests.

In early June, South Korea fully suspend the 2018 inter-Korean military pact after North Korea flew balloons carrying manure, cigarette butts and wastepaper across the border to protest South Korean activists scattering political leaflets in the North via their own balloons.

The military agreement — reached during a short-lived era of reconciliation between the Koreas — required the two countries to cease all hostile acts at border areas, such as live-firing drills, aerial surveillance and psychological warfare. The deal had already been in the danger of collapse, with both Koreas taking steps in breach of it amid animosities over North Korea’s spy satellite launch last November.