SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea’s recent changes to its constitution, including language that indicates reunification with the democratic South is no longer a priority for Pyongyang, have fueled both a bit of optimism and a healthy dollop of skepticism in Seoul.
The changes, quietly adopted earlier this year by North Korea, are attracting attention this week after a report by South Korea’s National Intelligence Service.
Among some South Koreans, the news has sparked hopes of an upturn in cross-border relations, but skeptics say the changes appear largely transactional. The changes appear to reflect a belated acceptance that the North has failed to match the prosperity enjoyed in the South and that a North-led unification process is impossible. They can also be interpreted as an attempt to further consolidate the ruling Kim regime’s iron-fisted hold on power in the North.
The standout constitutional shift — the North’s renunciation of the long-held concept of reunification — is not new. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un announced it at a party plenum in December 2023, but it was not entrenched in the constitution until March.
Given the nature of Mr. Kim’s rule, the change was almost certainly made without the kind of political back-and-forth or public referendum required in the South.
Reunification has been a priority for North Korea since the two states were created in 1948. The North invaded the South in 1950, launching a three-year war that killed millions. The peninsula has remained divided into two separate countries since.
The formal renunciation of reunification and recognition of two separate states may offer North Korea some moral high ground. South Korea’s constitution continues to claim all Korean territory.
South Korean territory “shall consist of the Korean Peninsula and its adjacent islands,” Article 3 of the South’s constitution reads.
Article 4 asserts that the state “shall seek reunification and shall formulate and carry out a policy of peaceful reunification based on the basic free and democratic order.”
The term “free and democratic order” challenges North Korea’s system, which grants its people hardly any rights or freedoms.
This year, World Population Review ranked North Korea as the world’s second most totalitarian nation, after Afghanistan.
Pyongyang invests massively in weapons of mass destruction, has logistically supported Russia’s war against Ukraine and, in late 2024, sent thousands of troops to fight Kyiv’s forces.
Even so, the South Korean National Intelligence Service, addressing the National Assembly on Thursday, offered lawmakers an upbeat assessment.
“There were no hostile remarks toward the South whatsoever,” lawmakers were told, the Yonhap News Agency reported. “While it made the two-states stance clear, it significantly toned down hostility [toward the South].”
North Korea’s new constitution also recognizes that its southern territory ends at its border with South Korea.
What is the North up to?
A South Korean familiar with intelligence warned that constitutional change in North Korea should not be judged by overseas norms.
“The North Korean Constitution does not have the same status as in South Korea; it’s like a formality,” the source said on the condition of anonymity. “Kim Jong-un has the final word — even North Koreans say that.”
Still, the change is a positive sign.
“I think they are sending a signal that inter-Korean relations are alive, and a North Korea team coming to the football match is not, I think, a coincidence,” he said.
On May 20, a Pyongyang-based soccer team will play a semifinal match against a South Korean team in the Asian Football Confederation Women’s Champions League.
It is the first North Korean deployment of athletes across the Demilitarized Zone separating the two nations since 2018, when multiple North Korean delegations visited the South for the Winter Olympics and other sporting events.
The North Koreans will likely be welcomed by liberal South Korean President Lee Jae-myung. He has sought cross-border relations and has pursued investigations into imprisoned former President Yoon Suk Yeol, a conservative, over cross-border drone incursions.
An overseas observer urged Seoul to respond to Pyongyang’s stance shift.
“The real positive is that they have removed the major reason to keep the Korean War going: Reunification,” said Charles Park, a Korean-American peace advocate. “It is a great peace overture, [South Korea] should reciprocate if it is serious about peace and normalization.”
Though combat ended with the 1953 armistice, deadly espionage attacks and naval clashes have been among the multiple flare-ups. The divided Koreas exist in a state of tension, their economies stretched by defense spending.
The intelligence source acknowledged that the North’s move looks more transactional than principled.
“It’s insurance,” he said. “They wanted to bypass Seoul to negotiate with [President] Trump but are figuring out that he is not going to be in power long enough to achieve what they want: recognition of their nuclear status by the U.S.”
By contrast, “South Korea is still there and seems very friendly right now,” he said.
He suggested that Pyongyang is wary of being ditched by its new ally, the Kremlin, if peace comes to Ukraine and Moscow seeks to rejoin the international community.
One expert said the change is a necessary recognition of North Korea’s national failures.
The South prospered under the U.S.-led global trading system, democratized and globalized with incredible success. The North descended into isolation, paranoia and poverty, relevant globally only for its military power.
“Kim’s statement simply said something which has been true for many decades: North and South Korea are two different states and peaceful negotiations for unification have never been realistic,” said Andrei Lankov, a professor of Korean studies at Seoul’s Kookmin University. “Reunification is only possible under violent scenarios — the North’s conquest of the South, or revolution and regime collapse in the North, followed by conquest by the South.”
He opined that Mr. Kim’s new position obviates a danger that informed North Koreans likely agonize over.
“The prosperity of a foreign country and rich neighbor is easier to accept if it is not part of your country,” he said. “If it is [part of your country], its success raises questions about your government.”
A precedent exists. In 1974, East Germany, left behind by West Germany’s economic surge, stopped referring to the two as one nation.
Reunification by conquest is problematic for the same reason. Realization by Northern troops of the South’s riches — and the challenge of suppressing the South’s feisty, highly democratized population — makes South Korea “impossible to digest,” Mr. Lankov said.
Still, North Korea’s new position puts South Korea, constitutionally bound to peaceful unification, in a bind.
“South Korea can continue to deny the reality and keep talking about peaceful unification as their goal,” Mr. Lankov said. “But it will look slightly comical, as it takes two to tango.”
• Andrew Salmon can be reached at asalmon@washingtontimes.com.
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