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For more than 20 years, the Arch of Reunification straddled the highway from Pyongyang to the heavily guarded border with South Korea as a symbol of hope that two countries ripped apart by war would one day be reunited.
But this week it lay crushed to dust, along with a goal that had spanned three generations of the Kim family dynasty to reconcile the North with the South of the Korean peninsula, under Pyongyang’s control.
New satellite images, analysed by NK News, showed the nine-storey monument – depicting two women in traditional dress reaching forward to jointly hold a globe with a map of a unified Korea – had been torn down days after Kim Jong-Un called it “an eyesore.”
Even before the arch’s destruction, the North Korean leader had had a belligerent start to the year. He publicly abandoned the unification aims of his forefathers, declaring the constitution be changed to designate South Korea the “principal enemy,” and to codify “completely occupying” it in the event of war.
More cruise missiles launched
Kim’s warmongering tone was accompanied by tests of a nuclear-capable ballistic missile and a suspected underwater nuclear weapons system. That followed revelations by US intelligence that Russia had fired North Korean-supplied ballistic missiles into Ukraine.
On Sunday, North Korea fired multiple cruise missiles off its east coast, its second such launch in less than a week.
