North Korea’s approach toward South Korea has swayed widely over the past decades. But, according to state media reports on Tuesday, North Korea has formally abandoned peaceful reunification as a key policy goal​. In announcing the drastic shift, the North’s leader, Kim Jong-un, said the North no longer saw the South as “the partner of reconciliation and reunification” but instead as an enemy that must be subjugated, if necessary, through a nuclear war. In recent decades, the reunification of the two Koreas has become increasingly unlikely as the economic gap between them widened and mutual enmity deepened. Mr. Kim ​unveiled his new ​stance on South Korea in a party meeting at the end of last month and in a speech he gave to the North’s rubber-stamp parliament, the Supreme People’s Assembly, on Monday.

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Persons: Kim Jong, Kim ​ Organizations: Supreme Locations: South Korea, North Korea