North Korea has removed all references to reunification with the South from its constitution, formally ending seventy years of foundational state ideology. Fletcher and Octavio explore what it means to erase an idea from a constitution, and why this moment may be more dangerous than it looks.
Corea del Norte ha eliminado de su constitución todas las referencias a la reunificación con el Sur, un cambio que pone fin formalmente a setenta años de retórica fundacional del Estado. Fletcher y Octavio exploran qué significa borrar una idea de una constitución, y por qué este momento podría ser más peligroso de lo que parece.
5 essential C1-level terms from this episode, with translations and example sentences in Spanish.
| Spanish | English | Example |
|---|---|---|
| dar marcha atrás | to reverse course, to backtrack | El gobierno intentó dar marcha atrás en la reforma constitucional, pero ya era demasiado tarde. |
| enmienda | amendment, constitutional revision | La enmienda aprobada esta semana elimina décadas de doctrina oficial del partido. |
| blindar | to armor, to make something unassailable or irreversible | El líder intentó blindar su legado antes de que ningún sucesor pudiera revertir sus decisiones. |
| parteaguas | watershed moment, turning point | La caída del muro fue el parteaguas que hizo posible la reunificación alemana. |
| hostigamiento | harassment, provocation, sustained aggression | El hostigamiento diplomático constante ha erosionado cualquier posibilidad de diálogo entre los dos estados. |
Picture a country that has spent seventy years telling its people, its army, its schoolchildren, that its single great historical mission is to reunite a divided homeland.
Now picture that country quietly crossing that out of its own constitution.
That's what happened this week.
Lo que ha hecho Kim Jong Un no es simplemente un cambio legal.
What Kim Jong Un has done is not simply a legal change.
Es una declaración filosófica.
It's a philosophical declaration.
Está diciendo que Corea del Sur no es una parte perdida de la nación coreana que algún día volverá al redil, sino un país extranjero, un adversario permanente, algo completamente separado.
He's saying that South Korea is not a lost part of the Korean nation that will one day return to the fold, but a foreign country, a permanent adversary, something entirely separate.
And the thing is, the reunification language wasn't just window dressing.
It was structural.
Kim Il-sung, the grandfather, built the entire legitimacy of the North Korean state around the idea that the division was temporary and that Pyongyang was the rightful capital of all Korea.
Exacto.
Exactly.
Hay que entender que la reunificación en Corea del Norte no era un eslogan vacío, como puede serlo en otros contextos políticos.
You have to understand that reunification in North Korea was not an empty slogan, the way it might be in other political contexts.
Era la justificación de por qué existía ese Estado.
It was the justification for why that State existed at all.
Sin esa promesa, la pregunta incómoda que surge es: ¿para qué existe Corea del Norte?
Without that promise, the uncomfortable question that arises is: what is North Korea actually for?
¿Qué es?
What is it?
That is the question, isn't it.
I mean, the whole founding mythology, going back to 1948, was built on the premise that Korea was one people temporarily separated by foreign interference, mainly the Americans and the Soviets carving the peninsula up after World War Two.
Y Kim Il-sung usó esa narrativa de una manera brillante y brutal a la vez.
And Kim Il-sung used that narrative in a way that was brilliant and brutal at the same time.
La guerra de Corea, que él inició en 1950, fue presentada como un intento de reunificación, no como una invasión.
The Korean War, which he started in 1950, was presented as an attempt at reunification, not as an invasion.
El fracaso militar de esa guerra nunca se reconoció como tal;
The military failure of that war was never acknowledged as such;
se convirtió en una victoria contra el imperialismo.
it became a victory against imperialism.
La reunificación quedó aplazada, pero nunca abandonada.
Reunification was postponed, but never abandoned.
Three million dead, give or take, and it gets reframed as a moral triumph.
That's a remarkable piece of political mythology to sustain for seventy years.
Los estados autoritarios son muy buenos en eso.
Authoritarian states are very good at that.
Pero lo que me parece fascinante de este cambio constitucional es el momento en que ocurre.
But what I find fascinating about this constitutional change is the timing.
Kim Jong Un ha pasado los últimos dos años construyendo un nuevo relato: Corea del Sur ya no es un hermano extraviado, es un enemigo hostil.
Kim Jong Un has spent the last two years building a new narrative: South Korea is no longer a wayward brother, it is a hostile enemy.
En 2024 cambió el Partido del Trabajo para reflejar eso.
In 2024 he changed the Workers' Party charter to reflect that.
Ahora es la constitución.
Now it's the constitution.
Está siendo metódico.
He's being methodical about it.
Methodical is the right word.
And I want to sit with that for a second, because that sequence matters.
Party charter first, then constitution.
That's not improvisation, that's doctrine being constructed layer by layer.
Claro.
Exactly.
Y hay una lógica interna muy coherente.
And there is a very coherent internal logic to it.
Si Corea del Norte reconoce tácitamente que la reunificación nunca va a ocurrir, entonces lo que tiene que hacer es justificar su propia existencia en otros términos.
If North Korea is tacitly acknowledging that reunification is never going to happen, then what it has to do is justify its own existence in other terms.
Esos términos son el Estado nuclear, la soberanía absoluta, la identidad norcoreana como algo distinto y superior.
Those terms are the nuclear state, absolute sovereignty, North Korean identity as something distinct and superior.
Which is interesting when you think about where South Korea has ended up.
The GDP gap between North and South is astronomical at this point.
The South Korean economy is something like fifty times the size of the North's.
So the framing of a united Korea under Pyongyang's leadership becomes harder to maintain with a straight face.
Totalmente.
Completely.
Y los norcoreanos que tienen acceso a información filtrada del Sur lo saben.
And North Koreans who have access to leaked information from the South know it.
Las memorias USB con dramas coreanos, con noticias, con películas, llevan años circulando clandestinamente.
USB drives loaded with Korean dramas, news, movies, have been circulating clandestinely for years.
Kim Jong Un lo sabe también.
Kim Jong Un knows it too.
La ficción de la superioridad norcoreana es cada vez más difícil de vender dentro del propio país.
The fiction of North Korean superiority is increasingly difficult to sell inside the country itself.
And maybe that's part of the calculation.
If you can't credibly promise a reunified Korea under your flag, better to declare South Korea a foreign enemy and build your identity around resistance rather than aspiration.
Es exactamente eso.
That's exactly it.
Hay un concepto en política comparada que se llama legitimación por amenaza: cuando un régimen no puede justificarse por sus logros, se justifica por los peligros que dice proteger a su pueblo.
There's a concept in comparative politics called legitimation through threat: when a regime cannot justify itself through achievements, it justifies itself through the dangers it claims to protect its people from.
Kim Jong Un es maestro en esto.
Kim Jong Un is masterful at this.
Y con Corea del Sur borrada como objetivo de reunificación, el enemigo queda más nítido, más útil.
And with South Korea erased as a reunification goal, the enemy becomes cleaner, more useful.
Let me ask you something about the South Korean reaction, because from what I've been reading, Seoul is treating this as a serious escalation.
There's genuine alarm there.
Does that surprise you?
No me sorprende para nada.
It doesn't surprise me at all.
Fíjate que Corea del Sur tiene su propio texto constitucional que sigue reclamando la peninsula entera como territorio coreano.
Note that South Korea has its own constitutional text that still claims the entire peninsula as Korean territory.
Hay una extraña simetría histórica en todo esto: ambos estados han vivido durante décadas con constituciones que decían que el otro no debería existir como entidad separada.
There's a strange historical symmetry in all this: both states have lived for decades with constitutions that said the other shouldn't exist as a separate entity.
Pero si el Norte abandona esa ficción, el Sur queda en una posición muy incómoda.
But if the North abandons that fiction, the South is left in a very uncomfortable position.
Right, because the entire architecture of the U.S.-South Korea alliance, the entire rationale for keeping American troops on the peninsula, is built on a kind of permanent state of unresolved conflict.
There's no peace treaty.
The Korean War technically never ended.
Es uno de los conflictos más extraños del mundo contemporáneo por esa razón.
It's one of the strangest conflicts in the contemporary world for that reason.
Un armisticio de 1953 que sigue vigente.
A 1953 armistice that is still in force.
Ni paz ni guerra, sino algo en el medio, una tensión congelada que ha durado más que la mayoría de los países africanos.
Neither peace nor war, but something in between, a frozen tension that has lasted longer than most African countries have existed.
Y ahora el Norte dice, en esencia: 'Ya no estamos esperando resolverlo.
And now the North is saying, in essence: 'We are no longer waiting to resolve it.
Estamos declarando que no hay nada que resolver.'
We are declaring there is nothing to resolve.'
Which, strategically, could be read as either de-escalatory or deeply alarming depending on your framework.
I've been going back and forth on this.
On one reading, if North Korea has abandoned the pretense of unification, maybe the nuclear arsenal is now purely defensive.
On another reading, a North Korea that has permanently defined South Korea as a foreign enemy is a more dangerous neighbor, not a less dangerous one.
Yo me inclino claramente por la segunda lectura.
I lean clearly toward the second reading.
Un Estado que ya no tiene la obligación retórica de 'liberar' al Sur puede actuar con mucha más frialdad.
A state that no longer has the rhetorical obligation to 'liberate' the South can act with much more cold calculation.
Antes, atacar al Sur habría sido, en teoría, liberar a hermanos.
Before, attacking the South would have been, in theory, liberating brothers.
Ahora sería simplemente eliminar a un enemigo.
Now it would simply be eliminating an enemy.
Eso cambia el umbral psicológico de la agresión.
That changes the psychological threshold for aggression.
That point about the psychological threshold, I hadn't thought about it quite that way.
The dehumanizing step, if you can call it that, of reclassifying the South Koreans from estranged family to foreign adversaries.
Y piensa en lo que eso significa para los norcoreanos que tienen familia al otro lado.
And think about what that means for North Koreans who have family on the other side.
Que no son pocos.
Which is not a small number.
Hubo intercambios de familias separadas, aunque muy limitados, durante la era del sol, la política de compromiso de los años noventa y dos mil.
There were reunions of separated families, though very limited ones, during the Sunshine era, the engagement policy of the nineties and two thousands.
Ahora esas familias son, formalmente, familias de ciudadanos de un estado extranjero hostil.
Now those families are, formally, families of citizens of a hostile foreign state.
The Sunshine Policy.
That whole period feels almost hallucinatory in retrospect.
Kim Dae-jung wins the Nobel Peace Prize in 2000 for a summit that turned out to be, well, disputed in its effects, let's say.
I covered some of the aftermath of that period and even then you could sense the wheels weren't turning the same way on both sides.
Es que el error fundamental de la política del sol fue asumir que el Norte compartía el mismo objetivo final que el Sur: una reunificación pacífica.
The fundamental error of the Sunshine Policy was assuming that the North shared the same ultimate goal as the South: a peaceful reunification.
Pero Kim Jong Il nunca quiso eso.
But Kim Jong Il never wanted that.
Lo que quería era dinero, reconocimiento diplomático, y tiempo para desarrollar su programa nuclear.
What he wanted was money, diplomatic recognition, and time to develop his nuclear program.
La política del sol le dio las primeras dos cosas y no pudo detener la tercera.
The Sunshine Policy gave him the first two things and couldn't stop the third.
And that's the thread that runs all the way to this week's constitutional change.
The nuclear program didn't happen in a vacuum.
It was the long game running underneath every diplomatic overture for thirty years.
Kim Jong Un heredó ese juego y lo ha llevado a su conclusión lógica.
Kim Jong Un inherited that game and has taken it to its logical conclusion.
Su abuelo soñaba con reunificación.
His grandfather dreamed of reunification.
Su padre usó la amenaza de la reunificación como herramienta de negociación.
His father used the threat of reunification as a negotiating tool.
Kim Jong Un ha decidido que ya no necesita esa herramienta: tiene bombas nucleares reconocidas internacionalmente, alianzas reforzadas con Rusia, y una economía que ha sobrevivido sanciones que habrían hundido otros estados.
Kim Jong Un has decided he no longer needs that tool: he has internationally recognized nuclear bombs, strengthened alliances with Russia, and an economy that has survived sanctions that would have sunk other states.
The Russia angle is significant and I don't think it gets enough attention.
The tens of thousands of North Korean troops that have been deployed in support of Russian operations in Ukraine, the weapons transfers.
North Korea has found a new patron and a new revenue stream simultaneously.
Y eso le ha dado a Kim una confianza que antes no tenía.
And that has given Kim a confidence he didn't have before.
Está menos aislado diplomáticamente que en cualquier momento desde los años noventa.
He is less diplomatically isolated than at any point since the nineties.
Con Rusia a su lado, el Consejo de Seguridad de la ONU queda bloqueado.
With Russia at his side, the UN Security Council is blocked.
Puede permitirse ser más provocador, y este cambio constitucional es, entre otras cosas, una provocación.
He can afford to be more provocative, and this constitutional change is, among other things, a provocation.
Directed at Seoul, at Washington, at both.
A ambos, sí.
At both, yes.
Y el timing no es casual.
And the timing is not coincidental.
Estamos en un momento de máxima distracción para Washington: el conflicto en Irán, el Estrecho de Ormuz, las negociaciones en curso.
We are at a moment of maximum distraction for Washington: the conflict in Iran, the Strait of Hormuz, the ongoing negotiations.
Corea del Norte lleva décadas usando los momentos de distracción estadounidense para dar pasos irreversibles.
North Korea has spent decades using moments of American distraction to take irreversible steps.
El ensayo nuclear de 2006 fue durante la guerra de Irak.
The 2006 nuclear test was during the Iraq war.
El de 2009, durante la transición de Obama.
The 2009 one, during Obama's transition.
That pattern is real.
I noticed it in the field covering other things, the way Pyongyang had a sixth sense for when the cameras were pointing somewhere else.
A missile test on the day of a G7 summit, a nuclear declaration when Washington was consumed with something domestic.
Lo que me pregunto, y no tengo una respuesta clara, es cómo reacciona China.
What I wonder, and I don't have a clear answer, is how China reacts.
Porque Beijing ha tenido una relación muy ambivalente con Corea del Norte: la necesita como estado tapón, pero los comportamientos nucleares de Kim la incomodan.
Because Beijing has had a very ambivalent relationship with North Korea: it needs it as a buffer state, but Kim's nuclear behavior makes it uncomfortable.
Un Kim Jong Un que ya no habla de reunificación sino de enemistad permanente con el Sur complica enormemente los cálculos de China.
A Kim Jong Un who no longer talks about reunification but about permanent enmity with the South enormously complicates China's calculations.
The buffer state logic, which I think a lot of Western analysis underweights.
China is not going to allow the Korean peninsula to be unified under a pro-American, nuclear-armed or conventionally allied government sitting right on its border.
That calculation doesn't change with Kim's constitutional edits.
No, pero lo que sí cambia es la utilidad de Corea del Norte para China.
No, but what does change is North Korea's usefulness to China.
Un Corea del Norte que se define como enemigo permanente del Sur es más difícil de presentar internacionalmente como un actor racional con el que negociar.
A North Korea that defines itself as a permanent enemy of the South is harder to present internationally as a rational actor to negotiate with.
China ha intentado, con escaso éxito, mediar entre Pionyang y Occidente.
China has tried, with limited success, to mediate between Pyongyang and the West.
Con esta movida, Kim le está diciendo a Beijing que ya no está en ese juego.
With this move, Kim is telling Beijing he is no longer in that game.
Which is either very confident or very reckless, possibly both.
One thing I want to make sure we don't skip over is what this means for the North Korean people, not the regime, not the geopolitics.
The ordinary person who has grown up being told that one day the nation would be whole again.
Eso es lo más difícil de medir porque no tenemos acceso real.
That is the hardest thing to measure because we don't have real access.
Pero hay testimonios de desertores, de personas que han escapado al Sur, y lo que cuentan es que la idea de reunificación era genuinamente emotiva para muchos norcoreanos, especialmente para las generaciones mayores que tenían familia al otro lado.
But there are testimonies from defectors, from people who have escaped to the South, and what they say is that the idea of reunification was genuinely emotional for many North Koreans, especially for older generations who had family on the other side.
Borrarla de la constitución es borrarla de la identidad nacional oficial.
Erasing it from the constitution is erasing it from the official national identity.
Lo que queda en su lugar es el orgullo de ser un Estado separado, distinto, y armado.
What remains in its place is the pride of being a separate, distinct, and armed State.
There's something genuinely melancholy about that.
Families separated in the 1950s, many of whom never saw each other again.
And now the official position is that those people were separated by the natural order of two different countries, not by a wound in a single nation.
Y mira, para ser justos, hay que decir que la reunificación tampoco sería fácil para el Sur.
And look, to be fair, we have to say that reunification would not be easy for the South either.
La reunificación alemana de 1990 le costó a Alemania Occidental billones de marcos y décadas de tensión social.
German reunification in 1990 cost West Germany trillions of marks and decades of social tension.
Korea del Sur tendría que absorber a 26 millones de personas con acceso a sanidad medieval, con traumas multigeneracionales, sin formación para una economía de mercado.
South Korea would have to absorb 26 million people with access to medieval healthcare, with multigenerational trauma, without training for a market economy.
Los surcoreanos más jóvenes llevan años siendo ambivalentes sobre si quieren eso.
Younger South Koreans have been ambivalent about whether they want that for years.
The Germany comparison comes up a lot and I've always thought it both helps and misleads.
It helps because it's the only modern example of a divided ideological nation coming back together.
It misleads because the gap between East and West Germany, enormous as it was, was nothing compared to the gap between North and South Korea today.
Completamente de acuerdo.
Completely agreed.
Y Alemania tenía una ventaja que Corea no tiene: los alemanes del Este podían ver la televisión occidental.
And Germany had an advantage that Korea doesn't have: East Germans could watch Western television.
Sabían cómo era la vida al otro lado.
They knew what life was like on the other side.
En Corea del Norte, ese conocimiento es todavía parcial, fragmentado, clandestino.
In North Korea, that knowledge is still partial, fragmented, clandestine.
La distancia psicológica entre los dos pueblos es probablemente mayor que en cualquier otro momento desde 1953.
The psychological distance between the two peoples is probably greater than at any other moment since 1953.
So where does this leave us?
Concretely, what should people watching this week's news actually take away from it?
Lo que yo me llevaría es esto: lo que ha pasado esta semana no es un cambio en la política de Corea del Norte, es una confirmación de que el cambio que ya ocurrió es permanente.
What I would take away is this: what happened this week is not a change in North Korea's policy, it is a confirmation that the change that already occurred is permanent.
Kim Jong Un no está ensayando una postura.
Kim Jong Un is not rehearsing a posture.
Está cerrando puertas jurídicamente, una por una, para que ningún sucesor pueda dar marcha atrás sin un esfuerzo constitucional enorme.
He is legally closing doors, one by one, so that no successor can reverse course without an enormous constitutional effort.
Está blindando su legado.
He is armoring his legacy.
Locking it in.
That's a sobering note to land on.
One thing that caught my ear during this conversation, actually, you used a phrase a little while back, dar marcha atrás.
I know what it means in context but I'd never quite clocked the literal image before.
Sí, 'dar marcha atrás' viene literalmente de la palanca de cambios de un coche, el mecanismo para meter la marcha atrás.
Yes, 'dar marcha atrás' comes literally from a car's gear shift, the mechanism for engaging reverse.
Significa hacer el movimiento contrario al que llevabas, retroceder.
It means making the opposite movement from where you were heading, to go back.
Y lo usamos para casi cualquier tipo de reversión: política, personal, económica.
And we use it for almost any kind of reversal: political, personal, economic.
'El gobierno dio marcha atrás en la reforma', 'ella dio marcha atrás en su decisión'.
'The government reversed on the reform', 'she reversed her decision.'
So it's not just 'to go back,' it's specifically the action of throwing something into reverse.
Which actually makes it more vivid than the English 'to backtrack' or 'to reverse course.' There's a mechanical snap to it.
Exacto.
Exactly.
Y funciona muy bien en política precisamente porque implica un esfuerzo deliberado, no un simple olvido.
And it works very well in politics precisely because it implies a deliberate effort, not a simple oversight.
Cuando dices que alguien 'dio marcha atrás', estás diciendo que tomó una decisión activa de revertir lo que estaba haciendo.
When you say someone 'gave reverse,' you're saying they made an active decision to undo what they were doing.
No se le fue sin querer.
It didn't just slip away from them.
Lo eligió.
They chose it.
O lo fue forzado a elegir, que también importa.
Or were forced to choose it, which also matters.
And given what we've been talking about for the last hour, the image of Kim Jong Un pointedly refusing to give marcha atrás, locking every door behind him, is about as precise a description as you could ask for.
Good phrase to end on.
Para una vez, Fletcher, llegas a una conclusión sin perderte por el camino.
For once, Fletcher, you reach a conclusion without losing your way.
Hay esperanza.
There's hope.