North Korea named Gen. No Kwang Chol as defense minister at a major parliamentary meeting this week, the country’s state media reported Wednesday.
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No, an army general who had previously served as defense minister between 2018 and 2019, will succeed Kang Sun Nam, the official KCNA news agency announced, without giving further details.
No Kwang Chol accompanied leader Kim Jong Un to Singapore in 2018 and to Vietnam the following year for talks with former US President Donald Trump.
Kim Jong Un earlier this year ordered the removal of clauses relating to Korean unification from the Constitution and dissolved agencies tasked with improving ties with the South.
But contrary to expectations, KCNA made no mention of the removal during the meeting of the Supreme People’s Assembly, which concluded on Tuesday.
Additionally, this week, Kim Jong Un said Pyongyang had “no intention of attacking the Republic of Korea” (South Korea’s official name), which some analysts interpreted as a softening of his rhetoric. .
According to Hong Min, an analyst at the Korea Institute for National Unification, North Korea may have decided to wait for the outcome of the US elections in November before changing its position towards Seoul, Washington’s ally.
North Korean officials could “consider adjusting the scale of constitutional revisions to align with the direction of the new American administration,” he told AFP.
Furthermore, the North Korean army confirmed on Wednesday that it would “permanently” cut the road and land routes between the two countries, in particular by dismantling the only existing railway line.
In practice, the border between the two Koreas is already completely closed. Since the end of the war in 1953, the railway line has only been in operation for a short period of 14 months, in 2007/08.
South Korean intelligence services indicated last June that Pyongyang had begun to dismantle its section of the track.
The North Korean military on Wednesday described this initiative as a “self-defense measure”, also confirming to strengthen its border fortifications.
