Ruling party's 'main enemy' demand on North Korea is a predetermined question, inaccurate framing

South Korea's ruling People Power Party is intensifying its attacks on Democratic Party candidates in the upcoming local and by-elections, demanding they explicitly identify North Korea as the nation's primary enemy. The party suggests that candidates unable to answer this question should "run in North Korea instead."

Park Sung-hoon, spokesperson for the People Power Party's central election committee, stated on May 25 that Democratic Party candidates like Ha Jeong-woo (Busan Buk-gap by-election), Park Chan-dae (Incheon mayoral race), and Kim Sang-wook (Ulsan mayoral race) are demonstrating "distorted security awareness" by failing to label North Korea as the enemy. The party insists that "North Korea is the enemy" is the only correct answer, a stance that critics argue is a predetermined question designed to elicit a specific response.

However, the article refutes the claim that South Korean defense white papers have consistently designated North Korea as the "main enemy." It clarifies that the term first appeared in the 1995 white paper following North Korea's "Seoul as a sea of fire" threat but was removed after the 2000 inter-Korean summit. Subsequent governments, including those led by the People Power Party's predecessors (Lee Myung-bak, Park Geun-hye) and the Democratic Party (Roh Moo-hyun, Moon Jae-in), have avoided the explicit "main enemy" designation. Instead, they used phrases like "direct military threat" or "the North Korean regime and military are the enemy."

The article points out that even the Yoon Suk-yeol administration, despite Yoon's past statements as a presidential candidate calling North Korea the "main enemy," did not use this specific term in its 2022 defense white paper. The paper maintained the phrasing from the previous administrations: "the North Korean regime and the North Korean military are the enemy." The use of "main enemy" is described as a 20th-century artifact, primarily employed by North Korea itself, notably by Kim Jong Un, who has repeatedly referred to South Korea as the "No. 1 hostile country, the immutable main enemy."

International practice generally avoids the term "main enemy" in official defense documents, preferring terms like "threat," to maintain strategic flexibility and avoid harming national interests. The article concludes that South Korea and North Korea are almost unique in their use of the "main enemy" concept in international relations, highlighting the anachronistic nature of the People Power Party's insistence on this terminology.