North Korea<\/a> has revised its constitution to define \u200bits territory as bordering South Korea and remove references to \u2060reunification, according to a draft of the text reviewed by Reuters, codifying leader Kim Jong Un\u2019s push to treat the two Koreas as separate states.<\/p>\nThe revision, believed to \u200chave been adopted at a March meeting of the Supreme People\u2019s Assembly, Pyongyang\u2019s rubber-stamp legislature, marks the first time North Korea \u200chas added a territorial clause to its constitution, Lee Jung-chul, a Seoul National \u200cUniversity \u2060professor, told a briefing at South Korea\u2019s Unification Ministry on \u2060Wednesday (May 6, 2026).<\/p>\n
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The new Article 2 says North Korea\u2019s territory includes land \u201cbordering the People\u2019s Republic of China and the Russian Federation to the north and the Republic of Korea to the \u200bsouth,\u201d as well as territorial waters \u200cand airspace based on that land, according to the text.<\/p>\n
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North Korean leader Kim Jong Un speaks during the fifth session of the Ninth Congress of the Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK), in Pyongyang
\n | Photo Credit:
\n via Reuters\n <\/p>\n
The clause also says North Korea \u201cwill never tolerate any infringement\u201d of its territory, but does not specify the location of its border with South Korea or explicitly \u200cmention disputed maritime boundaries such as the Northern Limit Line in the \u200bYellow Sea.<\/p>\n
The revised constitution also designates Mr. Kim, as chairman of the State Affairs Commission, as North Korea\u2019s head of \u2060state, replacing previous language that described the post as the country\u2019s supreme leader who represents the state.<\/p>\n
It also explicitly states that command over North Korea\u2019s nuclear forces \u200crests with the State Affairs Commission chairman, according to the text, formally placing authority over the country\u2019s nuclear arsenal in Mr. Kim\u2019s hands.<\/p>\n
A separate defence clause describes North Korea as a \u201cresponsible nuclear weapons state\u201d and says it will advance nuclear weapons development to safeguard the country\u2019s survival and development rights, deter war and protect regional and global peace and stability.<\/p>\n
According to South Korean \u200cmedia, Mr. Lee said the omission of a specific inter-Korean border suggested Pyongyang may be \u200btrying to avoid immediately creating a new source of friction, even as it embeds Mr. Kim\u2019s \u201ctwo hostile states\u201d doctrine in the country\u2019s highest \u2060law.<\/p>\n
Mr. Kim called in January 2024 for the constitution to be amended to define South \u2060Korea as the North\u2019s \u201cprimary foe and invariable principal enemy\u201d and to state that North Korean territory was separate from the South.<\/p>\n
Pyongyang has \u200cpursued a more hostile policy toward Seoul in recent years, while rebuffing repeated overtures for dialogue from South Korean President Lee Jae Myung.<\/p>\n
North \u200bKorea\u2019s permanent U.N. mission did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n
Published – May 06, 2026 12:35 pm IST<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"People offer flowers at the statues of late North Korean leaders Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10993,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[8303,8302,8301,8300,129],"class_list":{"0":"post-10992","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-pyongyang","8":"tag-kim-jong-un-north-korea","9":"tag-north-korea-drops-references-to-unification-with-south-korea","10":"tag-north-korea-korean-peninsula","11":"tag-north-korea-revises-constitution","12":"tag-pyongyang"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10992","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10992"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10992\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10993"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10992"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10992"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10992"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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