this post was submitted on 16 Jan 2024
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Leader Kim Jong-un has called for amending Pyongyang’s constitution to classify South Korea as the “No. 1 hostile country”

North Korea has followed through on leader Kim Jong-un’s conclusion that peaceful reunification with Seoul is impossible, scrapping the government agencies that were involved in such efforts and preparing to constitutionally brand South Korea as Pyongyang’s archenemy.

Speaking to North Korea’s parliament on Monday, Kim called for changing South Korea’s constitutional status to the “No. 1 hostile country.” The parliament immediately agreed to scrap the agencies involved in promoting reunification with the South and inter-Korean tourism, Pyongyang’s state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported on Tuesday.

Kim reiterated his conclusion that reunification of the two Koreas is no longer possible, citing claims that Seoul seeks to force the collapse of Pyongyang to gobble up North Korea. His comments followed a statement in late December that Pyongyang’s approach to reunification based on “one state with two systems” was diametrically opposed to Seoul’s goal of “unification by absorption.”

The North Korean leader has claimed that the US is seeking a military confrontation on the peninsula and has essentially turned South Korea into a military base and “colonial subordinate state.” He warned on Monday that military conflict may be inevitable.

“We don’t want war, but we have no intention of avoiding it,” KCNA quoted Kim as saying. “We will never unilaterally unleash a war if the enemies do not provoke us,” he added, warning that the “enemies should never misjudge this as our weakness.”

The US and South Korea have ramped up joint military exercises in the past year, while North Korea has carried out a series of missile tests. Pyongyang reportedly tested a solid-fuel ballistic missile armed with a hypersonic warhead on Sunday. The South Korean Defense Ministry condemned the launch and vowed an “overwhelming response” if Pyongyang commits a “direct provocation.”

(Non-archived link: https://www.rt.com/news/590709-north-korea-abolishes-reunification-agencies/ )

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[–] Pili@lemmygrad.ml 60 points 10 months ago (2 children)

uncritical support for the DPRK in its heroic struggle to liberate occupied Korea from the genocidal American empire

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[–] Parsani@hexbear.net 51 points 10 months ago (1 children)

That's a pretty big policy change

[–] darkcalling@lemmygrad.ml 55 points 10 months ago (1 children)

But a pragmatic one. At this point with how tightly they continue to hold to the failing empire, with how they beckon to their calls for shells for Nazis in Ukraine or joining their groups for isolating China, they are a vassal state and the US is simply not going to allow them to re-unify peacefully.

Realistically what the US and the Korean puppets in the south want is an East Germany situation which is as Un points out is absorption and negation of the socialist state by the capitalist one. That's the only kind of re-unification or even growing closer together they would accept.

It was a valiant and worthy effort to attempt to compromise, to offer peace, to try diplomacy but the south does not have enough people aware of the propaganda to resist it and the leadership are of course all puppets and American loving liberals and the American interest in maintaining a fascist buffer against communism and a staging area that close to China is too great. The old in Korea like the old in Taiwan who might know better and have some experience with the depravity of the Americans and the earnest goodness of the communists are a dying minority.

Now with Russian ties growing stronger and the alliance of resistance against US hegemony which includes China, there are opportunities for the DPRK that do not involve compromise with lying, backstabbing, fascists.

[–] DamarcusArt@lemmygrad.ml 27 points 10 months ago (2 children)

I do wonder how many people in the south are aware of the propaganda, but don't speak their minds, as they can be arrested for it (you know, the thing they accuse the north of doing).

[–] What_Religion_R_They@hexbear.net 17 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Probably a lot more are aware than English-speaking people think. Most of the suppression goes untranslated, but there's quite a lot of it. Would probably be hard as a Korean to avoid mentions of it, but maybe a lot dismiss it like western liberals dismiss communist suppression in the west.

[–] GarbageShoot@hexbear.net 16 points 10 months ago

Yeah, my impression is that Southerners might in large part be liberals, but they are more acutely aware of what a farce the fake testimonies of defectors are than anyone in anglophone countries are. Some people gobble it up, but it would be (roughly) like how FOX News has avid followers but is broadly held in disrepute.

[–] Juice@hexbear.net 10 points 10 months ago

Its probably like it is in other places, there are more or less historically accurate "left" views that go unreported, completely bias mass media pushing the imperialist line, and popular media that appeals to petite bourg and aspirational, effite workers that pushes a propagandized version of history that is somewhere in the middle.

I forget where I heard/read it, so idk sources, but like Yeonmi Park is on a South Korean reality show akin to "real housewives" drivel. And as we know when she comes here she feeds the pigs, "we had to eat rats and dirt," but on the reality show she is like, "The communists took away my family's rental properties" which is probably true. They can't pull the same ridiculous bullshit there, because most people have lived experiences that would contradict her lies. So they tell like a very varnished and bias version of the truth, to people who (for example) would be very upset at the prospect of losing rental income or even like a small business or something. To the oppressor, that is those who benefit from oppression and colonization, making things fair and equal is, to them, the same as being oppressed.

[–] 201dberg@lemmygrad.ml 38 points 10 months ago (2 children)

West knows that as China and Russian ramp up trade with NK, NK will advance rapidly. China is already starting to outpace the USs military. Russia has shown they are capable of way more than what the west thought. If NK advances past what SK is able to respond to then that's another foothold gone. I fully believe the US will try to start shit before 2025 when it's projected they US military will never catch up to Chinas production. They are trying to lock down all their control points for when they kick things off. It's why they are pushing so hard for Isn'treal to finish the genocide. That also don't want to be the ones to start the war. They want to be the bully that pushes and pushes until someone finally pushes back and then scream and cry about it as the cry for war.

[–] rando895@lemmy.ml 30 points 10 months ago (1 children)

The US has made itself a great candidate for becoming a vassal state, since there is very little material wealth generated domestically. Imagine if/when American businesses in China/Russia (I can't imagine there are any in NK right?) are nationalized. Especially if China stops exporting to the US. That would devastate the American economy, shortages of everything everywhere, and no productive capacity or expertise to fix it.

Capitalism is abandoning the empire.

[–] sinovictorchan@lemmygrad.ml 8 points 10 months ago

The reason why USA, and other Western European diaspora had advanced economically in the Cold War, was because they depend on the enslavement, unethical human experimentations for human health research, and property thief in fake schools that imprisons Indigenous children since 1850s to 1998 although the fake school genocide might still continue unofficially. The fake school holocaust by the British diaspora is what inspired the Nazi Holocaust and they continue the imprisonment of Indigenous people in concentration camps in dangerous barren wasteland and the chemical attacks against the Indigenous people until they surrender their properties, their inheritance, and the reparation for the fake school holocaust that many Indigenous parents were tricked into funding.

The centuries of fake school free riding had made Western European diaspora into parasites that free ride on the people of color to sustain their wasteful consumption, so the Western European diaspora are now trying to enslave or cheat on the immigrant of color and abandon the European diaspora in rural communities.

[–] Dolores@hexbear.net 18 points 10 months ago

NK advances past what SK is able to respond to

they've had that for a long time, it's that the US & Japan are supposed to back SK up and make up the difference

[–] GarbageShoot@hexbear.net 19 points 10 months ago

This is really disheartening, but with the aggression from the South in recent months, it makes sense.

[–] fire86743@lemmygrad.ml 17 points 10 months ago (3 children)
[–] freagle@lemmygrad.ml 60 points 10 months ago (32 children)

You mean that time the USA told Japan to not vacate the peninsula until the USA military arrived, took over the imperial colony of Japan on the peninsula, created an artificial border in the middle of a sovereign nation, and then used a crossing of that fake border to justify bombing nearly every single structure in the North until the military had to acknowledge there were no more targets left to hit, so instead they amped up their napalm campaign and Koreans needed to live in caves to survive while the USA occupation of South Korea was a racial and sexual domination playground until eventually they found enough compradors in South Korea to build a government with an air of legitimacy to provide cover for essentially turning the entire Southern portion of the peninsula into a USA military base and industrial base? That Korean War? The one that killed millions of civilians?

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[–] CannotSleep420@lemmygrad.ml 19 points 10 months ago

Technically the first never ended. Korean War 1.5 maybe?

[–] Frank@hexbear.net 17 points 10 months ago

The US is still at war with the DPRK. We've been in an armistice, a stalemate, for 70 years.

[–] American_Communist22@lemmygrad.ml 17 points 10 months ago

the end of the empire nears

[–] Redderthanmisty@lemmygrad.ml 12 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

I'm honestly surprised they've only just come to the conclusion that the South Korean govt will never, let alone be allowed by the US, to agree to a peaceful unification in any other form than that of East Germany.

[–] darkcalling@lemmygrad.ml 15 points 10 months ago

To be honest slamming the door on SK with all the sanctions on their country and the material suffering risk would have been irresponsible. I think this is mainly in response to not just the decades of failed peace processes and the recent provocations but also the new global economic reality that with Russia now isolated from the west and in their corner and China as well, shutting that door doesn't mean the same potential death sentence it might have meant in say 2004 or 2014.

[–] Civility@hexbear.net 11 points 10 months ago
[–] big_spoon@lemmygrad.ml 9 points 10 months ago

i mean, when even south koreans hate their own country, is not the big deal when the north just puts himself in the line for "people who hate ROK"

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