In the course of what CNN informed its viewers and readers was a gold-medal-winning diplomatic performance, Kim Yo-jong, the U.S.-sanctioned sister of Kim Jong-un, signed a guest book belonging to South Korea’s president Moon Jae-in. “I hope Pyongyang and Seoul get closer in our people’s hearts and move forward the future of prosperous unification,” she wrote. It was a “warm message,” CNN said.
Well, that’s one way to look at a threat to destroy a country.
The key word in Kim’s missive was “unification.” It is the official policy of both Pyongyang and Seoul to prepare for unification, of course; both capitals house ministries devoted to the task. Seoul takes a peaceful view of this process, one based on relationship-building and the eventual absorption of North Korea into South Korea’s democratic, capitalist system. North Korea’s is rather more bellicose: It calls unification “final victory”—a belated end to the Korean War with Pyongyang as the victor.
North Korea’s nuclear strategy, which has two prongs, is a central part of this. The North’s arsenal is of course partially defensive. Pyongyang learned what Muammar Qaddafi didn’t: that the best way to protect a totalitarian regime from outside threats is to build a nuclear deterrent. But the second rationale is outward-looking. The long-term goal is to split the U.S. from South Korea, and then, using nuclear weapons, coerce Seoul into unification.
The cleaving of Korea is a historical abomination—the artificial split of a country that had been unified for thousands of years. That the heavily fortified barrier has literally divided families in two for decades only adds to the poignancy of the separation.
But “unification” is only peaceful and warm when the word is used in the context that South Korea does. When the North says “unification” they mean final victory over the South, the destruction of a prosperous democracy, and the enslavement of 50 million more Koreans to the Kim cult.
Kim Yo-jong’s call for “unification” isn’t warm: It’s an implicit threat to destroy the country that hosted her.
