Rachel Minyoung Lee
Unification is a perennial topic of interest among Korea watchers, but it has been particularly popular — and confusing — in recent months, with North and South Korea each sending diametrically opposed signals.
South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol delivered a rare speech dedicated to unification on Liberation Day, 15 August 2024, reaffirming Seoul’s commitment to unification and even telling Pyongyang that South Korea would ‘keep the door to inter-Korean dialogue wide open’. This was despite Kim Jong-un’s announcement at the end of 2023 of a new two Koreas policy, which defined North and South Korea as ‘two belligerent states’ and discarded the decades-long policy of peaceful unification.
There was much speculation following the October 7–8 session of the North Korean parliament, the Supreme People’s Assembly, about whether the assembly had indeed revised the constitution to remove unification-related language and define North Korean territory according to Kim’s instructions in early 2024. Pyongyang subsequently implied that it made at least one revision related to inter-Korean issues — defining South Korea as ‘a hostile state’ — but it remains unknown whether it made other related amendments.
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