Seoul –

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has called for a constitutional amendment to change the status of South Korea to a separate state and warned that while his country doesn't seek war, it didn't intend to avoid it, the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported Tuesday.

Kim said Monday that it was his final conclusion that unification with the South is no longer possible in a speech to the Supreme People's Assembly, North Korea's rubber-stamp parliament, while accusing Seoul of seeking regime collapse and unification by absorption.

"We don't want war but we have no intention of avoiding it," Kim was quoted as saying by KCNA.

Three organizations dealing with unification and inter-Korean tourism will shut down, state media said.

The move comes as tensions have worsened in the Korean Peninsula recently amid a series of missile tests and a push by Pyongyang to break with decades of policy and change how it relates to the South.

Analysts have said North Korea's Foreign Ministry could take over relations with Seoul, and potentially help justify the use of nuclear weapons against the South in a future war.

While calling for South Korea to be designated as the "number one enemy" in its constitution, Kim also said a war would decimate the South and deal an "unimaginable" defeat to the U.S., according to KCNA.

Kim also said that if a war breaks out in the Korean Peninsula, the country's constitution should reflect the issue of "occupying," "recapturing" and "incorporating" the South into its territory.

In an address to the assembly, Kim said the security environment around his country had "turned into the most dangerous zone with risk of war outbreak in the world,” KCNA said. The country’s parliament embraced a position Kim delivered at a year-end political meeting where he said reunification with South Korea could never be achieved, as the South is his state’s "principal enemy,” KCNA said.

The move to abolish the agencies and the comments are likely designed to put pressure on conservative President Yoon Suk-yeol, who has taken a hard line against Pyongyang and angered Kim’s regime by stepping up military cooperation with the US and Japan. Those actions include joint training to counter threats posed by North Korea.

By harshly criticizing the policies of the Yoon administration, Kim may be trying to influence upcoming parliamentary elections in South Korea where the progressive camp that embraces rapprochement with Pyongyang is looking to keep control of the body.

Yoon’s government suspended part of the 2018 agreement to reduce tensions on the border reached between Kim and former progressive President Moon Jae-in after North Korea put a spy satellite in orbit in November. Seoul resumed reconnaissance flights near the border that were suspended under the agreement, and North Korea then announced it intended to scrap the entire accord.

Yoon on Tuesday criticized North Korea's move to define the South as a hostile country, saying it showed Pyongyang's "anti-national and ahistorical" nature.

Yoon also said North Korea's recent missile launch and artillery firing were a "political act" to divide the South Korean public and vowed that provocations will be met with its own response on a "multiplied scale."

Kim’s regime started the new year by conducting live-fire artillery drills near a South Korean border island that has been the sight of some of the deadliest confrontations between the two Koreas since the end of the 1950-1953 Korean War.

North Korea was once reliant on aid from South Korea, with trade between the two reaching about $2.7 billion in 2015, according to data provided by South Korea’s Unification Ministry. But as Kim pressed ahead with modernizing his nuclear arsenal, trade with Seoul that was once equal to about 10% of North Korea’s economy vanished as a part of international sanctions to punish Kim for his atomic ambitions.

Kim appears to have turned to Russia in recent months to supply cash, commodities and technology to Pyongyang in exchange for munitions and missiles to help Moscow fight its war against Ukraine.

North Korean Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui arrived in Russia this week for a trip that could facilitate a visit by President Vladimir Putin to Pyongyang and enhance arms transfers that appear to have replenished the Kremlin’s arsenal to attack Ukraine.

Top envoys from the US, South Korea and Japan held a call to discuss recent provocations by North Korea, including the launch this week of an intermediate-range ballistic missile, and "underscored that such actions are dangerous, irresponsible, and destabilizing to regional and international security,” the State Department said in a statement.