North Korea’s Kim shuts agencies working for reunification with South Korea

Kim Jong Un says his country does not want war but does not seek to avoid it.

North Korea has scrapped several government bodies tasked with promoting reconciliation and reunification with South Korea as authoritarian leader Kim Jong Un warned that his secretive country does not seek to avoid war.

In a speech to North Korea’s rubber-stamp parliament, the Supreme People’s Assembly, Kim said unification with South Korea is no longer possible and called for a constitutional amendment to change the status of South Korea to a separate, “hostile country”, the state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said on Tuesday.

“We don’t want war but we have no intention of avoiding it,” Kim was quoted as saying by KCNA.

The Supreme People’s Assembly said in a statement that three organisations handling inter-Korean reconciliation – the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Country, the National Economic Cooperation Bureau and the (Mount Kumgang) International Tourism Administration – will shut.

“The two most hostile states, which are at war, are now in acute confrontation on the Korean peninsula,” the assembly said, according to KCNA.