North Korea has removed all references to reunification with South Korea from a revised constitution, according to a document presented on Wednesday at a press conference held by Seoul's Unification Ministry, the South Korean news agency Yonhap reported.
Since the country's founding in 1948, the North Korean government has declared its goal is to work towards political unification with the South.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un first rhetorically distanced himself from this goal at the end of 2023, when he declared South Korea the "main enemy."
In January 2024, the government also tore down its symbolic reunification monument, a 30-metre-high structure in the south of the capital Pyongyang.
There were varying interpretations of the move, now also enshrined in the constitution. Political scientist Lee Jung Chul from Seoul National University said that the new policy could provide a basis for the "peaceful coexistence" of the two Korean states, Yonhap reported.
Other experts, however, see the risk of a potential military conflict between the two countries as having increased.
Since the Korean War (1950-53), the Korean peninsula has been divided into a communist North and a democratic South. The war ended with an armistice, but the two states have never signed a peace treaty.
