Air, sea and ground wings of South Korea’s armed forces take part in a major military parade through downtown Seoul on Oct. 1, 2024, to mark Armed Forces Day. (Kim Bong-gyu/Hankyoreh)
“Drop the lawsuit and call it quits!”
“No! Fine, I won’t push you to acknowledge the charges, so at least grant me the divorce!”
The first case illustrated in the TV series, “Good Partner,” which ended fairly recently, involved a woman suing her husband for divorce on the grounds of his incorrigible habit of infidelity. While they bicker, the husband pretends to be the ideal husband, urging his wife not to give up on the life they’ve built together as his wife, at her wit’s end, wails and pleads with him. She is fine with his denying the countless affairs but dead set on getting the divorce. However, lawyer Han Yu-ri stands in the way of meeting her goal. In the end, she loses the court battle.
Deciding to leave one’s partner is not easy, but even if you have your heart set on leaving, at times, it is difficult to do so successfully. Seeing how complicated separation is on a personal level, how cumbersome would it be for the two Koreas to bid each other adieu?
Choson, the name preferred by North Korea, is determined to split from South Korea. The state-run KCNA recently announced that Choson’s constitution was amended during its Supreme People’s Assembly held on Oct. 7 and 8 to “clearly define” South Korea as a “hostile state.” Choson has put its foot down and declared an ultimatum: it will not live in harmony with South Korea.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un candidly explained the meaning of such a decision during a visit to the Kim Jong-un University of National Defence on Oct. 7: “Formerly, we often spoke about liberating the south and reunification by force of arms, but now we are not interested in it. And since our statement about two separate states, we have been all the more unwilling to be conscious of the state in the south.”
Choson is no longer willing to consider the options of “liberating fellow kinsmen” or “reunification by force of arms.” It wants to forget about the existence of South Korea completely. Since the mere thought of South Korea brings chills down its spine, Choson desperately wants a divorce.
The end of the North’s regime versus retaliation by nuclear weapons
These declarations have not appeared out of the blue. Choson announced during an enlarged plenary meeting of the Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK) Central Committee at the end of 2023 and the Supreme People’s Assembly in January that inter-Korean relations were no longer “consanguineous or homogenous,” but had become “completely fixed into the relations between two states hostile to each other and the relations between two belligerent states.” This definition clearly stipulates that the two countries can no longer expect to live together harmoniously.
During the 8th Congress of the WPK in 2021, Pyongyang deleted a main goal from its party rules — the task of carrying out the “national liberation democratic revolution” — therefore officially denouncing its goal of unifying the two Koreas through absorption. The revised WPK rules states, “The immediate goal of the Workers’ Party of Korea is to build a wealthy and civilized socialist society in the northern half of the Republic,” expressing its intention to build an independent state separate from South Korea.
This “separate two nations” theory is nothing new. The simultaneous admittance of both Koreas to the UN in 1991 and the adoption of the Inter-Korean Basic Agreement in the same year more or less set the system of the separated two Koreas in stone. The June 15 North-South Joint Declaration adopted in 2000 specifically designated “President Kim Dae-jung of the Republic of Korea and National Defence Chairman Kim Jong-il of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea” as the main actors of the agreement, recognizing the two separate states, and agreed on the common element of South Korea’s “confederation” and the North’s “federation” to promote reunification.
While the system of two states has quite a long history, significant changes have been made to the definition of the relationship between the Koreas. If, in the past, the two Koreas were deemed to be in a “special relationship” geared toward a peaceful reunification, from the end of 2023, the relationship has been defined as one between two hostile states. Basically, the two Koreas have declared that they cannot live in the same house, so both want to call it quits while threatening each other with arson in the process.
On Oct. 2, Kim Jong-un said if South Korea were to encroach upon Choson’s sovereignty, the country would “use without hesitation all the offensive forces it possesses, including nuclear weapons.”
South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol provided the fodder for such extreme remarks. During an address made at the ceremony commemorating the 76th anniversary of Armed Forces Day on Oct. 1, Yoon remarked, “If North Korea attempts to use nuclear weapons, […] that day will be the end of the North Korean regime.” Such comments do not merely demonstrate the US’ nuclear doctrine, but function as active threats.
The US took a clear stance against Choson’s use of nuclear weapons in its 2022 nuclear posture review, saying, “There is no scenario in which the Kim regime could employ nuclear weapons and survive.” On the other hand, Yoon is ramping up threats by claiming that “attempts to use nuclear weapons” are enough to end Choson’s regime.
Yoon’s linking of “attempts to use nuclear weapons” to the end of the Pyongyang regime exemplifies the changes made to the South Korea-US nuclear deterrence strategy. In July 2024, Yoon and US President Joe Biden adopted joint guidelines for nuclear deterrence and nuclear operations on the Korean Peninsula, which discussed the integration of US nuclear weapons and South Korean conventional weapons. The guidelines stipulate that South Korea’s advanced conventional weapons capabilities will be integrated with US nuclear capabilities. South Korea’s three-axis defense system includes weapons systems that preemptively strike the source of possible attacks utilizing nuclear weapons. As such, it is easy to imagine a scenario in which South Korea’s conventional weapons fire first, the North retaliates with its nuclear capabilities, which leads the US to end the Pyongyang regime with its nuclear power.
More precarious than the US-Soviet mutually assured destruction
The exchange of verbal bombs in these circumstances only heightens tensions. With suspense on the Korean Peninsula almost reaching palpable levels over the spotting of unmanned drones in Pyongyang, the South Korean Ministry of Defense ratcheted up its menacing remarks by declaring that North Korea would “meet its end” if it endangers South Korean citizens. While what the ministry means by actions that “endanger South Korean citizens” remains ambiguous, it is clear that such vague, undefined actions are all it will take for North Korea to “meet its end.”
Kim Yo-jong, the vice department director of the WPK Central Committee and powerful sister of Kim Jong-un, released a blistering retort on the very same day, defining military provocations as a “hideous crime” and threatening South Korea with its “miserable end.”
Two days later, Kim Yo-jong lambasted South Korea by labeling its military as the “main culprit of the hostile provocation” by claiming it violated the sovereignty of Choson, warning that the “provocateurs [would] have to pay a dear price.” If one is unfamiliar with what she means, one only has to remember Kim Jong-un’s menacing message made on Oct. 2: Pyongyang will, if South Korea encroaches on its sovereignty, “use without hesitation all the offensive forces it possesses, including nuclear weapons.”
In this current situation, the smallest of sparks will be enough to kindle a fire. Nuclear weapons may be used to attack both countries on the Korean Peninsula. Choson is plodding forward with an extremely hardline deterrence strategy while declaring its intent to wage a nuclear war if need be, while South Korea proclaims that it will also not shy away from a nuclear war while propping up its unilateral extended deterrence strategy.
We are facing a far more precarious situation than the one the world faced under the risk of mutual assured destruction, caused by the nuclear capabilities of the US and the Soviet Union. Today, the nuclear capabilities of two countries are not keeping each other in check, but the flying of unmanned drones could be enough to trigger the usage of nuclear weapons.
South Korea and Choson both need to take a step back. The principle of proportionality exists in war. It is excessive of South Korea to respond to Choson’s blowing up of roads within its own territory with heavy machinery and it is excessive of Choson to threaten South Korea with nuclear weapons in response to having its sovereignty infringed upon by drones. If an immediate divorce seems out of the question, the two parties need at least some time to cool down.
By Suh Jae-jung, professor of political science and international relations at the International Christian University in Tokyo
Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]