Kim tells North Korean soldiers South is 'hostile’

SEOUL

This handout photo taken on Oct. 17, 2024 and provided on Oct. 18, 2024 by South Korean Defence Ministry shows South Korea's multiple launch rocket system Chunmoo firing a rocket during a live-fire drill in the border county of Goseong.

Kim Jong Un told North Korean soldiers that the South was a "foreign" country, state media reported on Oct. 18, saying Pyongyang had jettisoned any idea of reunification.

Despite remaining officially at war, the two Koreas have long defined ties as a "special relationship," not state-to-state relations, with a view to eventual reunification.

But Kim in January defined Seoul as his country's "principal enemy," and on Oct. 18 described ties with the South as an "evil relationship" that had ended with the detonation of roads between the two.

After months of laying fresh mines and ramping up security on the border, Pyongyang this week blew up roads and railways linking it to the South, and said its constitution now defined the South as a "hostile" state.

"Our army should keep in mind once again the stark fact that [South Korea] is a foreign country and an apparent hostile country," Kim told the 2nd Corps of the Korean People's Army, state media said.

Dynamiting roads and railways this week means "the end of the evil relationship with Seoul," Kim said, plus "the complete removal of the... unreasonable idea of reunification."

The North's army will strike back if needed "against the hostile country, not the fellow countrymen," he added, the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported.

The North last week held a key meeting of its rubber-stamp parliament, where experts had widely expected the constitution to be revised.

On Oct. 17, Kim also examined "important documents" outlining the North's "military action plans for coping with different developments of the situation," KCNA said.