Kim's New Tactic Against South Korea: Removing Lights

North Korean leader has streetlights removed from inter-Korean roads
By John Johnson,  Newser Staff
Posted May 7, 2024 9:55 AM CDT
Updated May 12, 2024 3:15 PM CDT
Kim Jong Un Finding New Ways to Vent Against South
In this photo provided by the North Korean government in March, leader Kim Jong Un, center, supervises artillery firing drills in North Korea.   (Korean Central News Agency/Korea News Service via AP, File)

Amid bombastic threats of war, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has found a much smaller-scale way to vent against South Korea. He had crews remove streetlights from the only remaining roads that connect the two countries, reports the Korea Herald. The pair of inter-Korean roads were built about 20 years ago, when hopes of reunification were in the air, and they hadn't been used much, if at all, in recent years. The removal of the lights, then, was more symbolic than anything, but it shows how committed Kim is to severing all ties with the South, per the Wall Street Journal.

The newspaper ticks off examples: tearing down the large Arch of Reunification in Pyongyang; altering the national anthem because one of its lines originally referenced the length of the entire Korean Peninsula; banning South Korean music, TV shows, and slang expressions; scrapping a military hotline, etc. And that's not to mention the more serious matters of ongoing nuclear tests and frequent threats of annihilation.

"Now is the time to be more thoroughly prepared for a war than ever before," Kim declared last month at the Kim Jong Il University of Military and Politics, per Al Jazeera. The outlet notes that Kim's stance appears to have hardened since the election of hard-line South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol in 2022. At this point, Kim is threatening war with its "principal enemy" over "even 0.001mm" of territory infringement. (More North Korea stories.)

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