North’s Kim calls South Korea ‘main enemy’

North Korea

Published: 10 Jan. 2024, 09:57 Updated: 10 Jan. 2024, 17:00

North’s Kim calls South Korea ‘main enemy’

In this photo released by Pyongyang's state-controlled Korean Central News Agency on Wednesday, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un speaks to officials during a two-day visit to a munitions factory that began Monday. [YONHAP]

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called South Korea his regime’s “main enemy” and said he has “no intent to avoid war,” the North’s state media reported on Wednesday.

Speaking during a two-day visit to a munitions plant on Monday, Kim said his regime “will not unilaterally decide to start a war on the Korean Peninsula,” but neither does it “have any intent to avoid war” with the South should it “conspire to use armed force” against the North or “threaten its sovereignty and security,” according to Pyongyang’s state-controlled Korean Central News Agency.

In such an event, Kim said the North “will not hesitate to annihilate” the South using “all means and forces available.”

Kim also said the North should “prioritize” strengthening its “military capabilities for self-defense and the nuclear war deterrent above all” in its approach to South Korea, with which he previously stated the North “shares not a fraternal relationship, but rather an enmity as exists between countries in a state of conflict” during a year-end meeting of the regime's ruling Workers’ Party.

During his visit to the munition factory, the North Korean leader also doubled down on his commitment to strengthening his regime’s “nuclear deterrence” capabilities, citing the “aggressive stance” of a “hostile nation” in reference to South Korea, whose government he called “self-destructive” and a “gangster regime.”

The Rodong Sinmun, the Workers’ Party’s official newspaper, said in a separate report that Kim “positively evaluated the active acceptance and application of new technologies in manufacturing key weapons systems” at the munition factory and “expressed satisfaction regarding the outstanding execution of plans to deploy new weapons” at frontline units.

The North escalated tensions on the Korean Peninsula over the weekend by firing hundreds of artillery shells from its western coast into the Yellow Sea near the Northern Limit Line (NLL), which serves as the de facto inter-Korean maritime border.

In response, the South Korean military said Monday it will restart live artillery exercises and drills near the border, adding the North’s recent exercise had effectively scrapped the buffer zone where such drills were banned.

Under the 2018 inter-Korean military agreement, all provocative actions, including firing coastal guns and conducting naval exercises, were prohibited in a buffer zone that extended 85 kilometers (52.8 miles) south and 50 kilometers north of the NLL, as well as a separate 80-kilometer-wide zone in the East Sea.

Tensions have escalated between the two Koreas since the North successfully launched a reconnaissance satellite into orbit in November.

The Yoon Suk Yeol government responded to the launch by announcing the suspension of the no-fly zone outlined in the 2018 agreement, arguing that restrictions on aerial reconnaissance along the border would hamper South Korean security.

Two days later, the North declared the complete nullification of the agreement.

Both Kim Jong-un and his powerful sister Kim Yo-jong have heightened their bellicose rhetoric directed at Seoul, with the North Korean leader saying his regime’s military needed to prepare to take over the South should a conflict erupt.

BY MICHAEL LEE [lee.junhyuk@joongang.co.kr]