TAIPEI, Taiwan – North Korea left South Korean territory blank on a revised map, labeling it with a different term that reflects Pyongyang’s policy change to view the South as a completely separate and hostile nation.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un pledged last year to amend the constitution to declare South Korea the “primary and immutable enemy,” abandoning the established notion of the South being a partner in reconciliation and reunification. Kim added that he no longer saw South Koreans as the same ethnic people.
However, it remains unclear whether North Korea has formally amended its constitution, as no official reports or announcements have been released.
The peninsula was divided in the aftermath of World War II but both the pro-communist North and pro-U.S. South have until last year professed the goal of eventual reunification.
A North Korean map, seen by Radio Free Asia, was posted on the Chinese social media platform RedNote, also known as Xiaohongshu, on Jan. 28 by a Chinese user claiming to study the North Korean language.
Dated April 2024 – just months after Kim’s announcement – the map refers to South Korea as “Hanguk,” the Korean term for the Republic of Korea.
Prior to January 2024, North Korea had consistently referred to the South as “Namjoson,” a term suggesting that South Korea was merely the southern part of one Korea.
While RFA has not independently verified the map’s authenticity, a Seoul-based North Korean defector who reviewed it said that he believed it was genuine.
The new map also leaves South Korean territory blank, in contrast to the 2012 and 2018 editions, which included details of administrative divisions for the South.
Earlier versions also marked key geographical endpoints of South Korea, such as “the southernmost point of Marado, Seogwipo City, Jeju Province” and “the easternmost point of Dokdo, Ulleung County, North Gyeongsang Province,” along with the total length of the Korean Peninsula from east to west and north to south.
However, all of these details have been omitted from the latest edition.
Boosting Kim Jong Un’s profile
Previous editions of the map included instructions from former North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, but these have been replaced with directives from his son, current leader Kim Jong Un.
Apart from that, the map was emblazoned with “2024” – not “Juche 113,” as it would have previously under the dating system based on the birth of North Korea’s founder Kim Il Sung, the current leader’s grandfather.
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The change appears to be yet another way that Kim Jong Un is trying to boost his profile by playing down reverence for his two predecessors.
Over the years, state propaganda has increasingly emphasized his leadership as the singular authority, reducing references to his father and grandfather in official documents, on monuments and in ideological material.
For instance, North Korea reportedly stopped the juche count in October, in favor of the Gregorian calendar used in most of the rest of the world.
The juche dating system is named after North Korea’s founding juche ideology of self-reliance, a philosophy conceived by Kim Il Sung.
In 1997, three years after Kim Il Sung’s death, official North Korean calendars began counting the years in terms of the era of juche, retroactively renaming 1912, the year of Kim’s birth, “Juche 1.”
According to this dating system, Korean independence from Japanese colonial rule occurred not in 1945, but “Juche 34,” and North Korea was founded not in 1948, but in “Juche 37.”
Edited by Mike Firn.