North Korean leader Kim Jong Un vowed to “irreversibly” cement his country’s status as a nuclear power while maintaining a hard line toward South Korea, North Korean state media reported Tuesday. Kim made the remarks Monday in a speech delivered to Pyongyang’s rubber-stamp parliament, as officials prepared to announce the outcome of a two-day Supreme People’s Assembly session that they said concluded with the passage of a revised constitution. The speech did not name U.S. President Donald Trump, but it outlined Kim’s hostile stance toward Washington and his continued emphasis on nuclear capabilities.
In his address, Kim described South Korea as the “most hostile” state and accused the United States of global “state terrorism and aggression.” State media said Kim framed North Korea’s posture as part of a united front against Washington amid what the report described as rising anti-American sentiment, while also stressing that he expected the direction of future relations to be shaped by the behavior of the adversaries.
Kim said that whether they “choose confrontation or peaceful coexistence is up to them,” and that North Korea was “prepared to respond to any choice,” without specifying what form that response would take. He also indicated North Korea would play a more forceful role in dealing with the United States, a stance that aligned with remarks he had made at the last month’s ruling Workers’ Party Congress, state media reported.
At that earlier congress, analysts and state media reporting said Kim vilified Seoul while leaving open the door for dialogue with the Trump administration, including an argument that Washington drop its demands for North Korea’s nuclear disarmament as a precondition for talks. The newer parliament speech reflected the same broader approach: hard rhetoric toward South Korea and the United States, paired with a political message that diplomatic engagement would be contingent on how Washington responds.
State media said the Supreme People’s Assembly passed the revised constitution during the Monday session, which followed two days of deliberations. The report did not specify what the changes were, though it noted that there had been expectations the revisions would codify South Korea as a permanent enemy and remove references to shared nationhood—an outcome that would fit Kim’s posture after he declared in 2024 that North Korea would abandon a long-term goal of peaceful unification.
Analysts cited in the report said Kim’s emphasis on South Korea’s hostility reflects his view that Seoul is no longer a useful intermediary with Washington, even though it helped arrange his first meetings with Trump in 2018 and 2019. The same analysis said Kim has shown sensitivity to South Korean influence, including by driving aggressive campaigns to block South Korean culture and language among North Koreans as he seeks to tighten his family’s authoritarian grip.
In the speech, Kim linked North Korea’s nuclear and missile expansion to the country’s security calculations and described it as the “right” choice to counter future threats and what he characterized as “hegemonic pursuits” by “gangsterlike” imperialists. He said in the address: “The dignity of the nation, its national interest and its ultimate victory can only be guaranteed by the strongest of power,” adding that North Korea’s government would “continue to consolidate our absolutely irreversible status as a nuclear power” and “aggressively” wage a struggle against “hostile forces.”
The report said Kim has suspended what it described as meaningful dialogue with Washington and Seoul since the collapse of his second summit with Trump in 2019 over U.S.-led sanctions on North Korea. It also said Kim has recently prioritized Russia in foreign policy, including sending thousands of troops and large amounts of military equipment to support Russia’s war in Ukraine, which analysts said could be tied to aid and military technology as Kim seeks to keep options open in case the war’s dynamics shift.
Some experts told the report they believed recent developments could raise Kim’s bar for reviving dialogue with Washington, including the joint U.S.-and-Israel attacks on Iran and the killing of Tehran’s previous supreme leader. The report also said North Korean state media announced that Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko would visit the country at Kim’s invitation, without immediately providing a date for the visit.