Changes in the Inter-Korean Policy of the DPRK and the ROK and Prospects for the Development of the Situation on the Peninsula

Abstract

At the December plenum of the Central Committee of the WPC in 2023 and the January session of the National Assembly of the DPRK in 2024. North Korea has radically changed inter-Korean policy, abandoning the course of "unification of the country." The authorities have disbanded relevant structures and intend to "completely remove from the national history of our Republic the very concept of "unification", "reconciliation" and "compatriots". According to Kim Jong-un, the DPRK and the Republic of Korea have finally become "hostile states" for each other, their relations are no longer determined by belonging to the same people, so the peaceful unification of the Korean peninsula is no longer considered possible. This course testifies to the recognition by the country's leadership of objective reality and does not lead to an increase in the probability of an inter-Korean conflict initiated by Pyongyang. This change of course was largely the result of the processes in the south of the peninsula, where the government of Yoon Seok-Yeol, on the contrary, strengthens the rhetoric of "achieving peace through force". The author considers President Yoon's speech on March 1, 2024, formally dedicated to the 105th anniversary of the March 1, 1919 movement to be a sign of the new course. This speech can be considered as a program of a new inter-Korean policy aimed at eliminating the DPRK by the international community. The changed relations between Seoul and Pyongyang should be perceived as a consequence of changes in the world order and the global security architecture, as the concepts that do not meet the new reality are revised or canceled. At the same time, Russia may be satisfied with the presence of a cold war on the peninsula, if it does not turn into a hot one, as well as with the further rapprochement between Moscow and Pyongyang, united by a common threat.