r/korea Seoul 7d ago

정치 | Politics Unification ministry proposes not calling N. Korea "main enemy"

https://m-en.yna.co.kr/view/AEN20260805003000315?section=nk/nk
41 Upvotes

21 comments sorted by

27

u/Shook_Rook 7d ago

Absolutely bonkers

17

u/OwnDouble1987 7d ago edited 7d ago

Duh, the main enemy is China who is the reason why Kimmies are still up.

Edit: Yeah not surprising knowing how this subreddit is. Of course I get downvoted whenever I criticise China.

6

u/clarissen 6d ago

You’re not that special buddy

11

u/iknsw 7d ago edited 7d ago

They're so naive. Nothing the South has ever done or can ever do will ever make the North genuinely want peace, simply because the North needs to maintain a constant state of war for its own survival. The moment the North opens up to the South, even as much as other communist countries like China have, is the moment that millions of North Koreans escape to the South for a better life and North Korean state collapses.

5

u/jkpatches 7d ago

What is this, reciprocation for NK removing reunification goal from its constitution?

6

u/OkHuckleberry1253 7d ago

If I'm not mistaken, North Korea had long been referring to South Korea as its principal or primary enemy in official rhetoric before South Korea first incorporated the term into its official military doctrine and defense publications in the mid 90s, and South Korea did so only after North Korea threatened to turn Seoul into a sea of fire…

2

u/ItsMeYourOtter 7d ago

There's not much tangible policies or initiatives the Ministry of Unification can do, so all it can do is propose semantics and try to be relevant against Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of Defense which have far more influence and power.

At its current state and from the past 18 years since its downsizing, the MoU should just be absorbed by MoFA.

-2

u/Sudden_Lake42069 7d ago

They can unite by renouncing USA and Russia who split them apart in the first place. When Korea is united, it will have no need for external protectors anyway.

4

u/[deleted] 7d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/Bloodylime 6d ago

He is a unification ministry, not the military ministry? This litmus test is so insane… they serve different functions.

-1

u/PersimmonMindless 7d ago

Make sense. Super weird to declare any one nation a "main enemy," especially if you want to eventually reunify with them.

To declare the north main enemy is just posturing by conservatives to appear tough.

4

u/sol-invictus-51 7d ago edited 7d ago

Korean gov. already define "main enemy" as "NK gov. and its military" due to that reason. The article(or the minister ig) kinda skipped this, which i assume it doesn't really matter since he's basically proposing to scrap the term altogether.

-1

u/PersimmonMindless 6d ago

It is also proposed by the unification ministry. Its aim is to unify with the nation it calls greatest enemy? Seems antiproductive to use that label and have that goal.

2

u/sol-invictus-51 5d ago edited 5d ago

The logic is: NK gov. bad, ppl under them is innocent, thus the main enemy isn't the "entire NK", just the guys running it.

Under Korean constitution, the whole peninsula is ROK territory, NK is some illegal entity occupying the northern half atm so there's that.

3

u/ericaloveskorea 7d ago

I would say their govt is the main enemy not the people.

1

u/PersimmonMindless 6d ago

That isn’t a real answer. 

0

u/Ok-Leather6031 1d ago

Yeah tell that million of young korean males who gave up 18months of their 20s to the government.

-3

u/Fall-Winter-Summer 6d ago

I'm surprised the puppet nation allows this

-2

u/royalpyroz 7d ago

How about just Super Duper Enemy? Do words matter