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North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. (KCNA/Yonhap file photo)

The governing committee of North Korea’s Democratic Front for the Reunification of Korea officially decided to dissolve itself at a meeting on Saturday, the Rodong Sinmun newspaper reported Sunday.

“There was a consensus of views that there is no need for the Central Committee of the Democratic Front for the Reunification of Korea [. . .] to exist any more now that the north-south relations have been completely fixed as the relations of two hostile states [. . .] and as the relations of two countries at war,” the report said.

The Democratic Front for the Reunification of Korea was a peripheral Workers’ Party of Korea organization consisting of 24 parties and social groups, including the WPK, the Korean Social Democratic Party, the General Federation of Trade Unions in Korea, and the Korean Christian Federation. It presented itself as a “front organization for reunification of the people.”

In its report on the Saturday decision, the Rodong Sinmun said, “The meeting stressed that the Workers' Party of Korea and the government of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea branded the Republic of Korea that has declared us as the ‘principal enemy’ and pursued only the ‘collapse of regime’ and ‘unification by absorption’ in league with outsiders for nearly 80 years as the most hostile state, immutable principal enemy and out-and-out another country that cannot be partner of reconciliation and reunification, and formulated anew the stand toward the north-south relations and reunification policy.”

At a ninth plenary meeting of the eighth WPK Central Committee in late December of last year, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un ordered the formulation of measures for the reorganization of organizations in the North’s South Korean affairs sector, including the United Front Department. On Jan. 12, the North voted to abolish its branches for the Committee for Implementing the June 15 Joint Declaration and Pan-national Alliance for Korea’s Reunification, the Consultative Council for National Reconciliation and the Council for the Reunification of Tangun’s Nation. This was followed on Jan. 15 by the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland.

The Democratic Front for the Reunification of Korea, which is the latest unification-oriented organization the North has decided to dissolve, was officially launched in 1949 with the integration of the National Democratic Front and the Democratic Front for the Reunification of Korea, which were respectively formed in South and North Korea in 1946, the year after Korea’s liberation.

By Lee Je-hun, senior staff writer

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