Chilling satellite pics show Kim Jong-un has BLOWN UP 200ft ‘reunification arch’ in threatening sign of defiance to West
KIM Jong-un appears to have blown up a major monument in North Korea’s capital that symbolised hope for unity of the whole nation.
The move is thought to have been a deliberate choice by the dictator, signalling his refusal to unite with his country’s “enemy”, the South.
Chilling satellite pictures taken on January 8 and later on January 23 appear to show the monument standing tall before it’s replaced by a gaping hole in the city’s capital, Pyongyang.
North Korean tyrant Kim had previously slammed the “eye-sore” arch for representing “reconciliation” with the South amid rising tensions between the two countries.
The arch, known as The Monument to the Three Charters for National Reunification, depicts two women from North Korea and South Korea holding hands.
The arch is visible in the first image but not in the second, according to a report by an online outlet that monitors North Korea, NK News.
In the aerial snap taken on January 23, a large dark dent in the ground looks to have opened up where the landmark once stood.
The Sun could not independently confirm that the Arch of Reunification had been demolished.
It remains unclear precisely when or how it may have been removed, but it was last seen standing in a photograph taken on January 19.
The apparent demolition comes after Kim called the arch an “eye-sore” on January 15 and ordered that it be “completely removed … to completely eliminate such concepts as ‘reunification,’ ‘reconciliation’ and ‘fellow countrymen’ from the national history of our Republic”.
He also ordered that the constitution be amended to call the South a “primary foe and invariable principal enemy,” official media reported.
Completed in 2001, the iconic landmark stood about 100ft tall and was 200ft wide.
The women in the statue are holding an emblem of the outline of the entire Korean Peninsula, according to a now-deleted page on the DPRK-run website Naenara.
The page stated: “It highlights that the Koreans are a homogeneous nation with one territory, the same blood and one language from ancient times, and that all the fellow countrymen should turn out in the struggle for national reunification, true to the three charters.”
The three charters of national reunification, proposed by the former president of North Korea Kim Il Sung in 1972, are independence, peaceful reunification and national unity.
Tensions between the North and South have flared again following intensifying military drills by the South Korean and US forces in response to weapons testing by North Korea.
Kim Jong-un‘s sister Kim Yo-Jong this month vowed to unleash an “immediate military strike” on the South at the “slightest provocation”.
Days later, the supreme leader of North Korea threatened to annihilate his country’s “principal enemy”, claiming to have “no intention of avoiding war”, according to state media.
North Korea fired a ballistic missile off its east coast on January 14 in its first provocative launch of 2024.
Seoul’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said at the time: “Our military detected one suspected intermediate-range ballistic missile launched from the Pyongyang area towards the East Sea around at 14:55.”
Kim Jong-un and Vladimir Putin have since agreed to form a “New World Order” and unite against the United States.
The North Korean Foreign Ministry said in a statement that the two countries wanted to further their strategic and tactical cooperation to defend their core interests and establish a “new multi-polarised international order”.