North Korean leader Kim Jong Un shocks the world with his declaration to abandon the goal of reconciling with South Korea, signaling the culmination of years of building tension. The international community closely observes the implications of this foreign policy declaration for the region and the future of inter-Korean relations.
Even for a nation that has perfected the provocative, North Korea n leader Kim Jong Un 's declaration that he would abandon the existential goal of reconciling with rival South Korea was a shock. But a closer look shows it's the almost inevitable culmination of years of building tension.
World powers will now be closely watching to see how one of Kim's biggest foreign policy declarations since he took power in 2011 plays out as he works to gain leverage in a region that holds both promise and danger for his small, impoverished, nuclear-armed nation. The bombshell came at this week's rubber-stamp parliament, where Kim called for rewriting North Korea's constitution to eliminate the idea of a peaceful unification between the war-divided countries and to cement the South as an 'invariable principal enemy.' It's the clearest sign yet of how far inter-Korean relations have fallen since February 2019, when Kim's nuclear diplomacy with former U.S. President Donald Trump imploded in Hanoi, Vietnam
North Korea Kim Jong Un South Korea Reconciliation Tension Foreign Policy Inter-Korean Relations