Severing Ties: North Korea informs public about inter-Korean road demolition

North Korea is holding public lectures on the demolition of key inter-Korean road links along the Seoul-Uiju and east coast corridors.

According to a source in Pyongyang on October 25, the lectures began on October 15 and are being held by party organizations and trade union groups including the Socialist Patriotic Youth League, the General Federation of Trade Unions and the Socialist Women’s League.

The public lectures included photographs of the demolition of the road connections. “These demolition measures are a legitimate exercise of North Korea’s sovereignty aimed at protecting its people from the military provocations and plots of our enemies,” authorities said.

“We must banish from our minds the familiar concepts of ‘one Korean nation’ and ‘unification’. We must completely eliminate any thought of communication or exchange with South Korea,” a teacher recently told a chapter of the Pyongyang Youth League.

“South Korea is not part of the Korean nation nor is it subject to reunification. Rather, it is a country that we must occupy. All our military actions are legal,” the speaker continued, attempting to stoke hostility toward South Korea and justify provocations against the South.

“We can specify in our Constitution the issue of fully occupying, subjugating and reclaiming the ROK and annexing it as part of the territory of our republic in case (…) war breaks out on the Korean Peninsula,” said North Korean leader Kim. Jong Un spoke in a policy speech to the Supreme People’s Assembly in January about the need to amend North Korea’s constitution.

The fact that recent speeches directly mention the “occupation” of South Korea may be based on North Korea’s amended constitution. In this regard, the October 17 reports on the demolition of inter-Korean road links on the Seoul-Uiju and East Coast corridors in state media, aimed at domestic and international audiences, stated the “constitutional requirement to define the Republic of Korea as a thoroughly hostile state.”

Lectures cause confusion for many

But the lectures were received coolly by the North Korean public.

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 former 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 tell us to put reunification out of our minds,” one complained.

“Do they think that 5,000 years of Korean history can be erased in an instant just because they say we are not the same nation anymore?” another commented.

“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 during these public lectures, North Korean authorities provide no details about the constitutional change. They seem to refrain from full disclosure in light of the possible backlash.

“The North Korean authorities appear to be very cautious about revealing the details of this constitutional change. Until now, the regime had justified its rule based on the plan for unification under a confederation that would achieve the goal of eventually 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 twist 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, said in a phone call to Daily NK.

“The regime seems to be taking its time introducing the narrative of two hostile states and eliminating the concepts of unification and ‘one Korean nation’ so that both the general public and the elite class can come to terms with these changes. The lectures at different 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 identity remains anonymous.

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