Kim’s about-face triggers panic among activists

The North’s about-face presents us with both a crisis and an opportunity.

Chang Se-jeongThe author is an editorial writer at the JoongAng Ilbo. Whenever tensions grow between the two Koreas, the North has threatened the peace of the Peninsula with bizarre statements, including the labeling of a South Korean leader as a “boiled cow head” and various armed provocations. But North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s bombshell statements in recent weeks are far different from those of the past. “North-South relations have completely fixated into hostile relations between two countries at war, not the homogeneous ones anymore,” Kim said at the Workers’ Party meeting on Dec. 30.

In his New Year’s address at the Supreme People’s Assembly on Jan. 15, Kim said, “We should completely eliminate such concepts as ‘reunification,’ ‘reconciliation’ and ‘fellow countrymen’ from the national history of our republic.”

Kim ordered the deletion of terms such as independence, peaceful unification and national solidarity from the North Korean constitution and a redefinition of the South as the “number one hostile state.” On Kim’s order, North Korea dismantled organizations dealing with South Korean affairs such as the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland, the National Economic Cooperation Bureau and the Mount Kumgang International Tourism Administration.

North Korean experts point out that these measures undermine the three key ideas of the July 4, 1972 Joint Statement. They also said the North has completely denied the 1991 basic agreement which defined inter-Korea diplomacy as “a special interim relationship stemming from the process towards unification” instead of “being a relationship between states.”

Kim’s remarks likely confused North Korean residents and pro-North Korean groups in the South, as they were a dramatic change to the direction of the North Korean regime’s propaganda.

A senior source well-informed about the affairs of the General Association of Korean Residents in Japan, or Chongryon, which has pushed a unification movement under the North’s guidance for more than 70 years, said the pro-North Korean group in Japan was baffled by Pyongyang’s recent stance. “They asked the North’s United Front Department if Pyongyang is abandoning the policy of unification, and what they should do from now on, but received no answers,” the source said.

It is even more surprising that pro-North activists in the South remain silent. If they were truly calling for unification, they should have organized a massive rally to condemn Kim Jong-un’s declaration of the anti-unification line, but they made no movement. Could it be that they have lost sense and fallen into a mental breakdown due to the North’s abrupt change to its South Korea policy?

Researcher Kim Young-hwan of the Network for North Korean Democracy and Human Rights, who brought Kim Il Sung’s ideology of juche, or self-reliance, to the South for the first time, said pro-North activists in the country must have been confused. The “godfather” of the pro-Pyongyang activists, who smuggled himself into the North using a submersible in May of 1988, met with Kim Il Sung in person.

The following is an excerpt from the interview.

Q. If Kim Il Sung were alive today, how would he react to his grandson’s denial of nationhood and reunification?A. “He would probably be furious. Kim Jong-il would show a different reaction. He thought that North-led unification was a delusion. But he did not deny it publicly as his son did, because elder veterans of the 1950-53 Korean War were still alive at the time.”

Why did Kim Jong-un publicize his denial of nationhood and unification at this particular time? “Before the 1980s, the North had claimed unification with an offensive attitude. But after that period, the North used it in a defensive mode by labeling the South as antiunification forces. Now, accusing the South of being anti-unification forces no longer works with the North Korean people. It seems that Pyongyang concluded that inter-Korean exchanges, cooperation and unification are threats to the Kim Jong-un regime.”

Why do hardcore followers of juche ideology remain strangely quiet? “I am also curious how Lee Seok-ki’s East Gyeonggi Coalition, which is still somewhat active, will react to the North’s about-face. Perhaps they will come up with bizarre logic without denying North Korea to get through this hardship. Those emotional pro-North activists who blindly followed the North’s propaganda will lose power and dismantle.”

As we enter 2024, inter-Korean relations are seeing a completely new phase amounting to a paradigm shift. Signs are serious that the North will stage provocations. The Defense Ministry and the Joint Chiefs of Staff as well as the National Intelligence Service and the Unification Ministry must read the North’s hidden intentions at times like now. The reality of the feudal hereditary dictatorship’s anachronistic propaganda and incitement against the flow of historical development should be widely known to the North Korean people and the rest of the world. The North’s about-face presents us with both a crisis and an opportunity.