N. Korea Abolishes Unification Efforts, Defines South As "Principal Enemy"

Yonhap News Agency reports that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un told the local parliament that he would abandon earlier attempts at rapprochement and unification with South Korea and called for defining Seoul as "invariable principal enemy" in the constitution.

• Kim reportedly told lawmakers that "we should (...) take other measures to completely eliminate such concepts as reunification" as he ordered the dismantling of residual agencies and infrastructure that could help promote the idea.
• His comments met with a pushback from South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol, who said that "the current RoK government is different from any previous government" and pledged to severely punish North Korea even for provocations.
• This follows North Korea's first apparent test of an intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) carrying a hypersonic warhead as well as an earlier string of artillery tests in the buffer zones around the inter-Korean maritime border.