North Korea Will Not Pursue Reconciliation With South, Kim Jong Un Says

January 17th, 4:00 AM EST

By NEWSnet Digital Team

North Korea and South Korea flags.

MGN

SEOUL, South Korea (NEWSnet/AP) — North Korea supreme leader Kim Jong Un said his country will not pursue reconciliation with South Korea.

He urged rewriting the North’s constitution to eliminate the idea of shared statehood between the countries, state media said Tuesday.

The step to discard a decades-long pursuit of a peaceful unification comes amid heightened tension. The pace of Kim’s weapons development and the South’s military exercises with the United States have intensified.

Some experts say Kim could be aiming to diminish South Korea’s voice in regional security matters and communicate more clearly that he might seek to deal directly with the United States over the nuclear standoff.

North Korea also abolished key government agencies that had been tasked with managing relations with South Korea, during a meeting of the country’s parliament on Monday, Korean Central News Agency said.

The Supreme People’s Assembly said the two Koreas are locked in an “acute confrontation” and that it would be a mistake for North Korea to regard the South as a diplomatic partner.

Kim blamed South Korea and the United States for raising tension, citing their expanded joint military exercises, deployments of U.S. strategic military assets, and their trilateral security cooperation with Japan as turning the Korean Peninsula into a dangerous war-risk zone, KCNA said.

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