North Korea is holding public lectures on the demolition of major inter-Korean road links along the Seoul-Uiju and east coast corridors.
According to a source in Pyongyang on Oct. 25, the lectures began on Oct. 15 and are being held by party organizations and labor groups, including the Socialist Patriotic Youth League, the General Federation of Trade Unions and the Socialist Women’s Union.
The public lectures have featured photos of the demolition of the road links. “These demolition measures are a legitimate exercise of North Korea’s sovereignty aimed at protecting the people from the military provocations and plots of our enemies,” the authorities said.
“We must expunge the familiar concepts of ‘one Korean nation’ and ‘unification’ from our minds. We must completely eliminate any thought of communication or exchange with South Korea,” a lecturer recently told a Pyongyang Youth League branch.
“South Korea is neither part of the Korean nation nor the subject of reunification. Rather, it’s a country we must occupy. All our military actions are legal,” the lecturer continued in an attempt to stir up hostility toward South Korea and justify provocations against the South.
“We can specify in our constitution the issue of completely occupying, subjugating and reclaiming the ROK and annexing it as part of the territory of our republic in case [. . .] a war breaks out on the Korean Peninsula,” North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said in a policy speech before the Supreme People’s Assembly in January while speaking of the need to amend North Korea’s constitution.
The fact that recent speeches have directly mentioned the “occupation” of South Korea may be based on North Korea’s amended constitution. In this connection, the October 17 reports on the demolition of the inter-Korean road links on the Seoul-Uiju and East Coast corridors in the state-run media aimed at domestic and international audiences mentioned the “constitutional requirement to define the Republic of Korea as a thoroughly hostile state.”
Lectures spark confusion among many
But the lectures received a cool reception from North Korean audiences.
Many party officials were perplexed as to how the party could reject the teachings of North Korea’s founder, Kim Il Sung, and his son, Kim Jong Il, father of current leader Kim Jong Un. There is resistance to the de facto rejection of the teachings of North Korea’s past leaders, which have been taken as gospel truth in the North.
“Not long ago they told us about the need to reunify the country, but now they’re telling us to erase reunification from our minds,” one person complained.
“Do they think that 5,000 years of Korean history can be erased in an instant just because they say we’re not the same nation anymore?” commented another.
“People can’t talk about it openly, but behind closed doors they say it’s ridiculous to say South Korea is not the same nation,” the source said.
But even in these public lectures, North Korean authorities are not providing details about the constitutional amendment. They appear to be holding back from full disclosure in light of the potential backlash.
“The North Korean authorities appear to be very cautious about revealing the details of this constitutional amendment. Thus far, the regime had justified its rule based on the plan for unification under a confederation that would achieve the goal of ultimately bringing the peninsula under North Korea’s communist rule. The same plan had also served as a pretext for the regime to demand sacrifices from the public. As a result, this pivot to the ‘two enemy states’ narrative must be a bitter pill for North Koreans to swallow,” Oh Gyeong-seob, a senior researcher at the Korea Institute for National Unification, told Daily NK in a phone call.
“The regime appears to be taking its time with introducing the narrative of two hostile states and the elimination of the concepts of unification and ‘one Korean nation’ so that both the general public and the elite class can come to terms with those changes. The lectures at various organizations can be understood in the same way,” Oh said.
The Daily NK works with a network of sources in North Korea, China, and elsewhere. For security reasons, their identities remain anonymous.
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