15 January 2019•Update: 15 January 2019
By Riyaz ul Khaliq
ANKARA
In a further sign of a thaw on the Korean Peninsula, the South has stopped calling North an “enemy state,” Yonhap news agency and other local media reported.
In its latest Defense Ministry white paper, South Korea dropped a reference to North Korea as its enemy, even though the neighbors are still technically at war, said Yonhap.
The biannual report released today, however, still mentions the “threat” from North Korea’s “weapons of mass destruction.”
South Korea has previously called North Korea its enemy or "main enemy.” Nearly a million troops remain stationed on both sides of the border since 1950-53 Korean War.
But in 2018, in unprecedented moves, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un held three summits with South Korean President Moon Jae-in and his first summit with U.S. President Donald Trump.
The report no longer called North Korea's military provocations or cyber-attacks the "main threat" to its security, Yonhap noted.
Moon took office in May 2017 with pledges to seek rapprochement with North Korea.
On defense policy for the next two years under the Moon administration, the report terms “any power that threatens the country's independence or its territory an enemy.”
North Korea, for its part, has not conducted any nuclear and ballistic missile tests for more than a year now.
