North Korea abolishes agencies seeking unification with South

North Korea has formally abolished a handful of government agencies charged with promoting cooperation and reunification with the South, state media has reported, with the country's leader calling for change in status of South Korea.

The decision was announced by the North's parliament, the Korean Central News Agency [KCNA] said on Tuesday, and came just weeks after the nation's leader Kim Jong-un said that continuing to seek reconciliation with South Korea was a "mistake".

Three organisations dealing with unification and inter-Korean tourism will shut down, state media said.

Kim called for a constitutional amendment to change the status of South Korea to a separate state and said it was his final conclusion that unification with the South is no longer possible in a speech at the Supreme People's Assembly, while accusing Seoul of seeking regime collapse and unification by absorption.

"We don't want war, but we have no intention of avoiding it," Kim was quoted as saying by KCNA.

"If the Republic of Korea violates even 0.001 mm of our territorial land, air and waters, it will be considered a war provocation," he said.

South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol immediately criticised North Korea's decision, saying it showed Pyongyang's "anti-national and ahistorical" nature.

Yoon also said North Korea's recent missile launch and artillery firing were a "political act" to divide the South Korean public and vowed that provocations will be met with its own response on a "multiplied scale."

"If North Korea carries out a provocation, we will retaliate multiple times stronger," he said in a meeting broadcast on television, pointing to the South Korean military's "overwhelming response capabilities".

The decision comes as tensions have worsened in the Korean Peninsula recently amid a series of missile tests and a push by Pyongyang to break with decades of policy and change how it relates to the South.

Analysts have said North Korea's Foreign Ministry could take over relations with Seoul.

Danger beyond warnings

In a report for the US-based 38 North project last week, former State Department official Robert Carlin and nuclear scientist Siegfried Hecker said they see the situation on the Korean Peninsula as more dangerous than it has been at any time since early June 1950.

"That may sound overly dramatic, but we believe that, like his grandfather in 1950, Kim Jong-un has made a strategic decision to go to war," they wrote.

"We do not know when or how Kim plans to pull the trigger, but the danger is already far beyond the routine warnings in Washington, Seoul and Tokyo about Pyongyang’s 'provocations.'"

Other observers have been more optimistic, however, saying the changes simply reflect reality and may help the two Koreas eventually normalise relations.

In their constitutions both North and South Korea claim sovereignty over the whole of the peninsula.

The Democratic People's Republic of Korea and Republic of Korea — the North and South's official names — were founded 75 years ago but each still technically regards the other as an illegal entity.

Until now, what passed for their diplomatic relations was handled by Seoul's Unification Ministry and Pyongyang's Committee for the Peaceful Reunification — one of the agencies that the Supreme People's Assembly has now declared abolished.

Missile launch

Meanwhile, the United States, Japan and South Korea in a call condemned North Korea's launch of a solid-fuel intermediate-range ballistic missile acday earlier, the US State Department said.

"The three sides underscored that such actions aredangerous, irresponsible, and destabilizing to regional and international security," the State Department said in a release about the solid-fuel intermediate-range ballistic missile fired on Sunday.

The missile launch violated multiple UN SecurityCouncil resolutions, the department said.