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       ？North Korea Says It Is No Longer Interested in Reunifying With the South

       Abandoning the longtime goal, however unlikely, Kim Jong-un, the North’s leader, instead threatened to subjugate South Korea in war.

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       North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un, center, addressing the Supreme People’s Assembly in Pyongyang on Tuesday in an image provided by North Korean state media. Credit...Korean Central News Agency, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

       By Choe Sang-Hun

       Reporting from Seoul

       Jan. 16, 2024

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       North Korea’s approach toward South Korea has swayed widely over the past decades. While it has often called the South its “sworn” and “principal enemy” and threatened to “annihilate” it with nuclear weapons, at times it has also engaged in dialogue and discussed a possible reunification.

       But, according to state media reports on Tuesday, North Korea has formally abandoned peaceful reunification as a key policy goal？. In announcing the drastic shift, the North’s leader, Kim Jong-un, said the North no longer saw the South as “the partner of reconciliation and reunification” but instead as an enemy that must be subjugated, if necessary, through a nuclear war.

       In recent decades, the reunification of the two Koreas has become increasingly unlikely as the economic gap between them widened and mutual enmity deepened.

       Mr. Kim ？unveiled his new ？stance on South Korea in a party meeting at the end of last month and in a speech he gave to the North’s rubber-stamp parliament, the Supreme People’s Assembly, on Monday.

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       Choe Sang-Hun is the lead reporter for The Times in Seoul, covering South and North Korea. More about Choe Sang-Hun

       A version of this article appears in print on Jan. 17, 2024, Section A, Page 4 of the New York edition with the headline: North Korea Says It No Longer Wants a Peaceful Reunification With the South . Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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