North Korea Will No Longer Pursue Reconciliation with South Because of Hostility, Kim Jong Un Says 

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un attends the 10th Session of the 14th Supreme People's Assembly of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, at the Mansudae Assembly Hall, in Pyongyang, North Korea, January 15, 2024. (KCNA via Reuters)
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un attends the 10th Session of the 14th Supreme People's Assembly of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, at the Mansudae Assembly Hall, in Pyongyang, North Korea, January 15, 2024. (KCNA via Reuters)
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North Korea Will No Longer Pursue Reconciliation with South Because of Hostility, Kim Jong Un Says 

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un attends the 10th Session of the 14th Supreme People's Assembly of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, at the Mansudae Assembly Hall, in Pyongyang, North Korea, January 15, 2024. (KCNA via Reuters)
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un attends the 10th Session of the 14th Supreme People's Assembly of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, at the Mansudae Assembly Hall, in Pyongyang, North Korea, January 15, 2024. (KCNA via Reuters)

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said his country would no longer pursue reconciliation with South Korea and called for rewriting the North’s constitution to eliminate the idea of shared statehood between the war-divided countries, state media said Tuesday.

The historic step to discard a decades-long pursuit of a peaceful unification, which was based on a sense of national homogeneity shared by both Koreas, comes amid heightened tensions where the pace of both Kim’s weapons development and the South’s military exercises with the United States have intensified in a tit-for-tat.

Some experts say Kim could be aiming to diminishing South Korea’s voice in regional security matters and communicate more clearly that he would seek to deal directly with the United States over the nuclear standoff, which has deepened amid disagreements over the stringent US-led sanctions over his growing nuclear weapons program.

Declaring the South as a permanent adversary, not as a potential partner for reconciliation, could also be part of efforts to improve the credibility of Kim's escalatory nuclear doctrine, which authorizes the military to launch preemptive nuclear attacks against adversaries if it perceives the leadership in Pyongyang as under threat.

The North Korean steps come as Kim has been actively boosting his partnerships with Moscow and Beijing as he attempts to break out of diplomatic isolation and increase his leverage by joining a united front against Washington.

North Korea also abolished the key government agencies that had been tasked with managing relations with South Korea during a meeting of the country’s rubber-stamp parliament on Monday, the North’s official Korean Central News Agency said.

The Supreme People’s Assembly said the two Koreas are locked in an “acute confrontation” and that it would be a serious mistake for the North to regard the South as a partner in diplomacy.

“The Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Country, the National Economic Cooperation Bureau and the (Diamond Mountain) International Tourism Administration, tools which existed for (North-South) dialogue, negotiations and cooperation, are abolished,” the assembly said in a statement.

During his speech, Kim blamed South Korea and the United States for raising tensions in the region, citing their expanded joint military exercises, deployments of US strategic military assets, and their trilateral security cooperation with Japan as turning the Korean Peninsula into a dangerous war-risk zone, KCNA said.

Kim said it has become impossible for the North to pursue reconciliation and a peaceful reunification with the South, which he described as “top-class stooges” of outside powers that are obsessed with confrontational maneuvers.

He called for the assembly to rewrite the North’s constitution to define South Korea as the North’s “primary foe and invariable principal enemy.” The new constitution should specify North Korea would pursue “occupying, subjugating and reclaiming” South Korea as part of the North's territory if another war erupts on the Korean Peninsula, Kim said.

He also ordered the removal of past symbols of inter-Korean reconciliation, to “completely eliminate such concepts as ‘reunification,’ ‘reconciliation’ and ‘fellow countrymen’ from the national history of our republic.”

He specifically demanded cutting off cross-border railway sections and tearing down a monument in Pyongyang honoring a pursuit for reunification, which Kim described as an eyesore.

“It is the final conclusion drawn from the bitter history of the inter-Korean relations that we cannot go along the road of national restoration and reunification together,” he said.

South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol during a Cabinet meeting in Seoul said Kim’s comments show the “anti-national and anti-historical” nature of the government in Pyongyang. Yoon said the South was maintaining firm defense readiness and would punish the North “multiple times hard” if it provokes it.

“(The North)’s fake peace tactic that threatened us to choose between ‘war’ and ‘peace’ no longer works,” Yoon said.

In his speech at the assembly, Kim reiterated that the North has no intention to unilaterally start a war, but has no intentions to avoid one either. Citing his growing military nuclear program, he said a nuclear conflict in the Korean Peninsula would end South Korea’s existence and bring “unimaginable disaster and defeat to the United States.”

Kim had made similar remarks during a year-end ruling party meeting, saying ties between the Koreas have become “fixed into the relations between two states hostile to each other.” At a political conference last week, he defined South Korea as the North’s “principal enemy” and threatened to annihilate it if provoked.

The assembly said North Korea's government would take “practical measures” to implement the decision to abolish the agencies handling dialogue and cooperation with the South.

The National Committee for Peaceful Reunification has been North Korea’s main agency handling inter-Korean affairs since its establishment in 1961.

The National Economic Cooperation Bureau and the Diamond Mountain International Tourism Administration had been set to handle joint economic and tourism projects between the Koreas during a brief period of reconciliation in the 2000s.

Such projects, including a jointly operated factory park in the North Korean border town of Kaesong and South Korean tours to the North’s Diamond Mountain resort, have been halted for years as relations between the rivals worsened over North Korea’s nuclear ambitions.

Those activities are currently banned under UN Security Council resolutions against the North that have tightened since 2016 as Kim accelerated his nuclear and missile tests.

Kim has further vowed to expand his nuclear arsenal and severed virtually all cooperation with the South. He has dialed up his weapons demonstrations to a record pace since the start of 2022, using the distraction created by Russia’s war on Ukraine to expand his military capabilities.

There’s also growing international concern over an alleged arms cooperation deal between North Korea and Russia. The United States and South Korea say North Korea has provided Russia with arms, including artillery and missiles, to help its fight in Ukraine.



Risk of Further Floods in Texas during Desperate Search for Missing as Death Toll Tops 80

05 July 2025, US, Ingram: A K9 unit with the Texas Game Warden conducts searches in flood damaged areas next to Camp Mystic in Hunt. Photo: San Antonio Express-News/Express-News via ZUMA Press Wire/dpa
05 July 2025, US, Ingram: A K9 unit with the Texas Game Warden conducts searches in flood damaged areas next to Camp Mystic in Hunt. Photo: San Antonio Express-News/Express-News via ZUMA Press Wire/dpa
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Risk of Further Floods in Texas during Desperate Search for Missing as Death Toll Tops 80

05 July 2025, US, Ingram: A K9 unit with the Texas Game Warden conducts searches in flood damaged areas next to Camp Mystic in Hunt. Photo: San Antonio Express-News/Express-News via ZUMA Press Wire/dpa
05 July 2025, US, Ingram: A K9 unit with the Texas Game Warden conducts searches in flood damaged areas next to Camp Mystic in Hunt. Photo: San Antonio Express-News/Express-News via ZUMA Press Wire/dpa

With more rain on the way, the risk of life-threatening flooding was still high in central Texas on Monday even as crews search urgently for the missing following a holiday weekend deluge that killed at least 82 people, including children at summer camps. Officials said the death toll was sure to rise.

Residents of Kerr County began clearing mud and salvaging what they could from their demolished properties as they recounted harrowing escapes from rapidly rising floodwaters late Friday.

Reagan Brown said his parents, in their 80s, managed to escape uphill as water inundated their home in the town of Hunt. When the couple learned that their 92-year-old neighbor was trapped in her attic, they went back and rescued her.

“Then they were able to reach their toolshed up higher ground, and neighbors throughout the early morning began to show up at their toolshed, and they all rode it out together,” The Associated Press quoted Brown as saying.

A few miles away, rescuers maneuvering through challenging terrain filled with snakes continued their search for the missing, including 10 girls and a counselor from Camp Mystic, an all-girls summer camp that sustained massive damage.

Gov. Greg Abbott said 41 people were unaccounted for across the state and more could be missing.

In the Hill Country area, home to several summer camps, searchers have found the bodies of 68 people, including 28 children, Kerr County Sheriff Larry Leitha said.

Ten other deaths were reported in Travis, Burnet, Kendall, Tom Green and Williamson counties, according to local officials.

The governor warned that additional rounds of heavy rains lasting into Tuesday could produce more dangerous flooding, especially in places already saturated.

Families were allowed to look around the camp beginning Sunday morning.

One girl walked out of a building carrying a large bell. A man whose daughter was rescued from a cabin on the highest point in the camp walked a riverbank, looking in clumps of trees and under big rocks.

One family left with a blue footlocker. A teenage girl had tears running down her face as they slowly drove away and she gazed through the open window at the wreckage.

Searching the disaster zone Nearby crews operating heavy equipment pulled tree trunks and tangled branches from the river. With each passing hour, the outlook of finding more survivors became even more bleak.

Volunteers and some families of the missing came to the disaster zone and searched despite being asked not to do so.

Authorities faced growing questions about whether enough warnings were issued in an area long vulnerable to flooding and whether enough preparations were made.

President Donald Trump signed a major disaster declaration Sunday for Kerr County and said he would likely visit Friday: “I would have done it today, but we’d just be in their way.”

“It’s a horrible thing that took place, absolutely horrible,” he told reporters.

Prayers in Texas — and from the Vatican Abbott vowed that authorities will work around the clock and said new areas were being searched as the water receded. He declared Sunday a day of prayer for the state.

In Rome, Pope Leo XIV offered special prayers for those touched by the disaster. The first American pope spoke in English at the end of his Sunday noon blessing, saying, “I would like to express sincere condolences to all the families who have lost loved ones, in particular their daughters who were in summer camp, in the disaster caused by the flooding of the Guadalupe River in Texas in the United States. We pray for them.”