North Korea has voiced its hostile stance against South Korea on a stronger note during a year-end key party meeting in a bid to use it as an excuse to bolster its military capability and intensify internal solidarity, Seoul’s unification ministry said Tuesday.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un defined inter-Korean ties as relations “between two states hostile to each other” and vowed to “overwhelmingly” deter acts of U.S.-led confrontations, as he wrapped up the five-day plenary meeting of the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea on Saturday.

Kim also called for a “great event to suppress the whole territory” of South Korea by mobilizing all physical means and nuclear force, and said he will no longer consider the South as a counterpart for reconciliation and unification.

Assessing the outcome of the party meeting, the ministry said North Korea appears to have shown “jitters” in attaining its 2014 policy goals as it highlighted tensions with Seoul and Washington in order to further elicit people’s loyalty to the
regime.

“By using a stronger term than (an expression used in 2022), North Korea emphasized its animosity against us in a bid to strengthen its military capabilities and deepen internal solidarity,” a ministry official told reporters on condition of anonymity.

At a year-end party meeting in 2022, Kim called South Korea an “undoubted enemy” and called for an “exponential” increase in the country’s nuclear arsenal.

At the 2023 meeting, North Korea said it aims to launch three more military spy satellites, bolster its nuclear arsenal and produce unmanned combat equipment, such as attack drones, in 2024.

South Korea’s spy agency recently said North Korea is expected to stage provocative acts early this year ahead of the South’s parliamentary elections in April and the U.S. presidential election in November.

Source: Yonhap News Agency