Opinion | Nuclear-armed North Korea is pivoting from reunification to coexistence

The North Korea that leaves the ninth Workers’ Party Congress is a different country from the one that left the eighth congress in 2021. Five years ago, the centrepiece of the eighth party congress was an ambitious weapons development programme unveiled by North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and accompanied by belligerent rhetoric against the United States, both of which indicated the North Korean leadership’s concerns about their vulnerability.

Now, Kim’s regime has an improved and resilient nuclear arsenal, a strong military alliance with Russia tested on the battlefields of Ukraine and an economy that has recovered from the Covid-19 pandemic. Simultaneously, Kim emphasised that South Korea was a “most hostile” nation, even as he signalled openness to cooperation with the US. This has reanimated security concerns on the Korean peninsula, as there appears to be no pathway for inter-Korean diplomacy while the North designates Seoul as a hostile state.

Although Kim is a totalitarian dictator, he still has to maintain his own legitimacy among party elites. Declaring South Korea to be a hostile and therefore separate state indicates a careful middle ground that is a fundamental reorientation of how the North has defined its identity for nearly 80 years.

For decades, North Korea had to balance two competing frameworks that defined its government’s legitimacy and purpose: first, that all Koreans, North and South, were meant to be reunified into a cohesive entity, as Korea had been for centuries. Second, that North Korea was the only legitimate force of independence on the peninsula, and its righteous decolonisation campaign was only upended because of the machinations of American imperialists during the Korean war. In many ways, North Korea’s essential political purpose has been built on the notion that it must liberate the peninsula, and that peace can never be fully achieved until liberation is accomplished.

This has produced an entangling effect of North Korea’s own making and repeatedly throttled attempts at negotiation. Part of the challenge comes down to the way that events such as the Korean war are remembered. While much of the world calls the conflict “the Korean war”, the North refers to the “Fatherland Liberation War” and a narrative of American imperialists, supported by hirelings such as Syngman Rhee, attacking the Korean people in an unprovoked invasion.