Recent North Korean state-enforced doctrine has decreed that South Korea is a hostile state, and any talk of unification is absolutely forbidden. This is a dramatic change from the decades of teachings in the Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-il eras, when unification was seen as inevitable – though of course always under the domination of the North. Since South Korea has developed into a major economic and cultural powerhouse, however, this line is no longer credible. Hence, no doubt, this new position.
Unfortunately for North Koreans the old ways of thinking – of one people, Koreans – is hard to shake off. And a slip of the tongue or idle comment could be dangerous.
From the Daily NK:
North Koreans still think of South Koreans as members of the same nation, but many now fear those words could slip out at the wrong moment. That fear has grown as Kim Jong Un’s “two hostile states” doctrine moved from party lecture halls into the country’s revised constitution in 2026.
“People still see them as the same people, but there’s a widespread fear of using those expressions without realizing it,” a North Hamgyong province resident said when asked about South Koreans.
The answer captures a quiet tension that runs through North Korean society today. The sense of shared ethnicity and kinship has not disappeared. Yet years of state education ordering people to treat South Korea as an enemy state have taught many North Koreans to police their own speech first….
According to a Daily NK source in North Hamgyong province, officials at meetings and lectures now call South Korea the “puppet Republic of Korea” or “puppet Korea.” In daily life, however, people avoid naming South Korea directly. When they must refer to it, they nod southward and say “over there” or fall back on the old nickname “the village down below.”
That nickname reflects a deeply ingrained habit of speech that has outlasted official policy. It cannot by itself prove that North Koreans still feel a sense of shared ethnicity. It does, however, show a clear gap between the terms the authorities demand and the words people actually use….
At workplaces, schools and neighborhood watch units, people have been taught that South Koreans are no longer the same people or their compatriots. Neighborhood watch units are groups of a few dozen households that the state uses to monitor daily life and relay political instructions. Lecturers argue that North Korea has preserved its unique national character while South Korea’s language and way of life have become corrupted. They even cite marriages to foreigners and the children born of them as proof that South Koreans have lost their national identity.
Confimation, if any were needed, that a fascist-style notion of ethnic purity still pervades the supposedly socialist nation. [In his 2010 book The Cleanest Race, BK Myers argued that the guiding ideology of North Korea was a combination of Japanese fascism and race-based nationalism rather than Stalinism or any other form of socialism.]
This education goes well beyond explaining that the two Koreas have different political systems. It rejects the very idea that South Koreans belong to the same community. It appears designed to replace decades of emphasis on shared ethnicity with the perception of South Korea as an enemy state.
Another reason for this new line would be to provide an ideological reason for the strict ban on all South Korean culture.
Jung Kyo-jin, a visiting research fellow at Korea University’s Center for North Korean and Unification Studies, said the two-state theory collides with the unification teachings handed down by Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il. “Judging from the fact that official outlets such as the Rodong Sinmun have not offered a systematic explanation of the two-state theory, its theoretical foundation still appears incomplete,” Jung said.
He added that defining South Korea as an enemy state “is also aimed at blocking the spread of the Korean Wave inside North Korea.” The goal, he said, is to make people see the consumption of South Korean culture as a hostile act. The Korean Wave refers to the global popularity of South Korean dramas, music and films, which circulate in North Korea on smuggled USB drives despite harsh penalties.
South Korean culture must be hugely attractive to North Koreans, living as they do in a cultural desert. Hence the vehemence of the crackdown.
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