North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has called for a constitutional change to define South Korea as a "primary foe and invariable principal enemy," with the top legislature deciding to abolish entities that promote dialogue with the South, state-run media said Tuesday.
In a speech at a session of the Supreme People's Assembly on Monday, Kim said his country should not refer to South Korean people as "fellow countrymen" and the supreme law should call for intensified education to spread the idea that they are an enemy, the official Korean Central News Agency said.
The leader said the constitutional revision should be discussed at the next parliamentary session.
His remarks were made amid escalating tensions on the Korean Peninsula. Pyongyang recently fired a barrage of artillery shells near the disputed western maritime boundary with South Korea, followed by Seoul conducting a military exercise in retaliation.
South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol criticized the North's move during a Cabinet meeting Tuesday, saying defining the Koreas as hostile to each other shows Pyongyang's "anti-national and ahistorical" nature.
Kim also said Pyongyang can specify in its Constitution "the issue of completely occupying, subjugating and reclaiming" South Korea and annex it as a part of the North's territory in case of a war breaking out on the Korean Peninsula.
He called the Northern Limit Line, the two Koreas' de facto maritime border, illegal and warned that if South Korea violates "even 0.001 mm (millimeter) of our territorial land, air and waters, it will be considered a war provocation." The NLL was drawn by U.S.-led U.N. forces after the 1950-1953 Korean War.
Kim also instructed the blocking of all the channels for North-South communications along the border, including "physically and completely cutting off the railway tracks in our side" that existed as a symbol of inter-Korean exchanges and cooperation "to an irretrievable level."
The leader also said the envisioned constitutional revision should be followed by timely practical measures "to get rid of the remnants of the past era" which may be seen as symbols of the two Koreas "with consanguineous and homogeneous relations" as well as "peaceful reunification."
The parliament decided to scrap three organizations intended for cooperation with the South -- the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Country, the National Economic Cooperation Bureau and the Kumgangsan International Tourism Administration, according to KCNA.
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