Mick Hartley

North Korea recently destroyed roads leading to the South, as a concrete display, as it were, of the increasing anti-South Korea rhetoric and rejection of the idea of reunification. From the Daily NK:

North Korea is holding public lectures on the demolition of major inter-Korean road links along the Seoul-Uiju and east coast corridors. 

According to a source in Pyongyang on Oct. 25, the lectures began on Oct. 15 and are being held by party organizations and labor groups, including the Socialist Patriotic Youth League, the General Federation of Trade Unions and the Socialist Women’s Union.

The public lectures have featured photos of the demolition of the road links. “These demolition measures are a legitimate exercise of North Korea’s sovereignty aimed at protecting the people from the military provocations and plots of our enemies,” the authorities said.

“We must expunge the familiar concepts of ‘one Korean nation’ and ‘unification’ from our minds. We must completely eliminate any thought of communication or exchange with South Korea,” a lecturer recently told a Pyongyang Youth League branch.

“South Korea is neither part of the Korean nation nor the subject of reunification. Rather, it’s a country we must occupy. All our military actions are legal,” the lecturer continued in an attempt to stir up hostility toward South Korea and justify provocations against the South.

“We can specify in our constitution the issue of completely occupying, subjugating and reclaiming the ROK and annexing it as part of the territory of our republic in case [. . .] a war breaks out on the Korean Peninsula,” North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said in a policy speech before the Supreme People’s Assembly in January while speaking of the need to amend North Korea’s constitution.

This doesn't sit easily, however, in a nation inculcated with Kim worship and the sacred doctrines of Great Leader Kim Il Sung.

But the lectures received a cool reception from North Korean audiences.

Many party officials were perplexed as to how the party could reject the teachings of North Korea’s founder, Kim Il Sung, and his son, Kim Jong Il, father of current leader Kim Jong Un. There is resistance to the de facto rejection of the teachings of North Korea’s past leaders, which have been taken as gospel truth in the North.

“Not long ago they told us about the need to reunify the country, but now they’re telling us to erase reunification from our minds,” one person complained.

“Do they think that 5,000 years of Korean history can be erased in an instant just because they say we’re not the same nation anymore?” commented another.