North Korea eliminated the foreign ministry’s Fatherland Reunification Bureau in early 2022, well before leader Kim Jong Un proclaimed his “two hostile states” doctrine, according to multiple sources inside the country.
A former North Korean diplomat who defected to South Korea said during a recent debate that the North had already scrapped the bureau in 2022. Daily NK sources’ testimony lends credence to his claim.
According to the sources, the Fatherland Reunification Bureau had played a significant role in propaganda efforts toward South Korea since the 1990s. However, its role began weakening after the 2018 inter-Korean and North Korea-U.S. summits, and the bureau was officially scrapped in early 2022.
Even by 2018, the Foreign Ministry’s Fatherland Reunification Bureau handled only formal diplomatic protocol, one source said. Ultimately, it was divided and absorbed into the Central Committee’s United Front Department and another body run directly by Kim Yo Jong.
The United Front Department is a key party department that handles inter-Korean exchanges and operations against South Korea. It has been reorganized as Bureau 10 of the Central Committee and is also called the Enemy State Guidance Bureau.
Long-term strategy
The scrapping of the Fatherland Reunification Bureau suggests the Kim Jong Un regime had been preparing its new “two hostile states” strategy toward South Korea for quite some time, meaning the move cannot be seen as a mere administrative shakeup.
The leadership no longer views reunification as realistic, the source said. It believes North Korea and South Korea must be recognized as two independent nations, premised on the mutual existence of the regimes.
In South Korea, they interpret this as scrapping the reunification policy, but in North Korea, it’s seen as a process of stabilizing the national system and making diplomatic strategy realistic, the source said. This is simply a superficial change and does not mean a withdrawal from or retreat from policy toward South Korea.
North Korea’s “two states” doctrine is linked to the regime’s strategy to present itself as a “normal country,” which aims to achieve three goals: bolstering national identity, ensuring regime security and laying the groundwork for diplomatic diversification.
The two states doctrine goes beyond consolidating independent sovereignty as a nuclear state in the constitution and system and the logic of reunification, the source said. It is a strategic concept to win recognition as a normal country during later negotiations with the United States by blocking the introduction of reactionary thought and shifting the relationship between North and South Korea to a bilateral relationship under international law. It is a strategy for regime stability as part of Kim Jong Un’s long-term thinking.
Preserving the regime
Another source said North Korea now thinks of reunification as a channel for foreign intervention. The “two states” doctrine is a strategic adjustment to preserve the regime, the source added.
The concept that North Korea is an independent, sovereign nation is now taking root, and the country has already begun moving from the age of reunification to the age of two states, the source said.
North Korea is reportedly paying attention to South Korea’s reaction. If South Korea flatly rejects the “two states” doctrine, North Korea will revert to a competition of legitimacy, the source said. This means that if the South responds in a hardline fashion, the North will use it to bolster the Korean Peninsula’s confrontation over regime legitimacy, which will be used to promote internal unity.
Meanwhile, Daily NK recently reported — quoting a source in North Hamgyong province — that the Central Committee’s Propaganda and Agitation Department has focused on public ideological indoctrination efforts to promote the idea of North Korea as a completely independent nation, distributing study materials titled “Our Republic is One, Complete National System.”
