SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — 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 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.

North Korea also abolished the key government agencies that had been tasked with managing relations with South Korea in a decision made 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 a speech at the assembly, Kim blamed South Korea and the United States for raising tensions in the region, citing their expanded joint military exercises, deployments of U.S. 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 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.”

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.

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.

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.”

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 U.N. 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.

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Until then, I thought that both the “bipartisan” $1 trillion “infrastructure”, and the “progressive” Democrat $3.5 trillion “reconciliation” packages were just obscenely bloated versions of previous “stimulus” spending we had with Obama and Trump.

Now I know that both bills are far more radical and dangerous. They are sponsored by people who hate America’s large, prosperous, and politically independent middle class. These “woke” Democrats are determined to break us.

The premise of both bills is that by enjoying safe and comfortable lifestyles, we are causing floods, fires, and droughts that are ruining the planet. They say this is because we are burning too much fossil fuel. The goal of both bills is to cut America’s fossil fuel use in half during the next nine years. If these bills become law, the federal government will heavily fine every power company that does not systematically shut down most of its coal, oil, and natural gas power plants by then. It would also pay billions as bribes to companies to build and use new solar panels and wind turbines instead.

The federal government would also pay people, businesses, and schools to buy electric cars, trucks, and buses. It would also pay for more solar panels.

This would permanently end prosperity in America. Solar panels and wind turbines cannot power a modern economy. The electricity they generate is too weak, intermittent, unpredictable, and unreliable. Solar and wind energy is often wasted. It cannot be stored when not needed. It saves little if any fossil fuel. That is because backup generators must always be running to give the grid steady power whenever the wind stops, night falls, or a cloud goes by.

Nuclear power plants are a reliable, cost-effective alternative to fossil fuels. They provide 71% of the electricity in France. Of course, neither bill promotes new nuclear power plants.

If both bills pass, power companies will be in an impossible situation. If they keep fossil fuel plants to provide reliable power, they will pay big fines and pass that cost to their customers. Everything we buy will then cost more. If power companies comply and rely on unreliable solar panels and wind turbines, frequent power failures will become normal.

People with electric cars, trucks, and buses will often find it difficult or impossible to charge them. As in the days before railroads and steamships, every long trip will be difficult and uncertain.

Americans will again walk or ride horses or bicycles in the heat, the cold, and the rain. Homes, schools, and businesses will again be cold in the winter and hot in the summer. The comfortable, middle-class American Dream will be gone for all but the rich. Germany and Denmark already have invested heavily in solar panels and wind turbines. They have the highest electric rates in Europe. They avoided disaster only by buying expensive nuclear electricity from France, and natural gas from Russia.

Yet in spite of this, “progressive” Democrats have good reasons to think they will get the support and votes needed to pass these bills.

Their union teachers and professors made the last three generations of students virtually illiterate in basic science. Few Americans today know that climate changed to create an Ice Age 10,000 years ago and that the earth has warmed ever since. They know nothing about how we convert the energy of spinning wheels or sunlight into electricity. They never had science fairs. They never did experiments to see how many solar panels and wind turbines it takes to power a microwave or washing machine. They know nothing of reputable scientists like Michael Shellenberger, author of Apocalypse Never. Shellenberger makes a persuasive case that man-made climate change is “slight and manageable” and that “climate alarmists” do more harm than good.

Democrats carefully designed both massive spending packages to bribe every interest group they need to get elected and re-elected next year. Their combined $4.5 trillion spending plan includes $18 billion for homeowners, $13.5 billion for vehicle charging stations, $5 billion for “free” electric firetrucks and school buses, $27.5 billion for “green” energy “loans” that don’t get paid back. The evillest spending is roughly $6 billion paid to schools, colleges, and “community organizers” for “climate justice” programs.” These are pure propaganda campaigns to promote their fake science and to elect Democrats who support this radical agenda.

Finally, Democrats know that their allies in the media will scare voters into supporting this program. Every day they will falsely report that every hurricane, tornado, heavy rain, drought, and brush fire in America is caused by “climate change.” They will falsely blame anyone who opposes these spending packages as being responsible for every death and loss.

Will conservative Americans wake up and fight back in time to stop this?

Seth Grossman | Columnist

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