North Korea revises constitution, calls South Korea separate state & drops reunification

North Korea has released the full text of its revised constitution, formally defining South Korea as a separate neighbouring country and removing references to reunification, in a further step towards institutionalising leader Kim Jong-un's policy of treating the two Koreas as hostile states.The revised document, published on Wednesday on the North Korean propaganda website Naenara, also expands Kim's authority over the country's nuclear forces, including allowing him to delegate the power to use nuclear weapons to the state nuclear command organisation.According to the Korea JoongAng Daily, the constitution was amended at the first session of the 15th Supreme People's Assembly on March 23.

Its publication ends a period of more than two and a half years during which Pyongyang had made the constitutional text inaccessible online.The most significant change is in Article 2, which defines North Korea's territory as the land bordering China and Russia to the north and the Republic of Korea to the south, along with the territorial waters and airspace associated with it.