N. Korea labelled "enemy" again in S. Korea's defence white paper

South Korea's Defence Ministry has referred to the North Korean regime and military as an "enemy" in its new white paper, for the first time in six years.

In the 2022 Defense White Paper, the ministry also described Japan as a "close neighbour" in line with Seoul's move to improve bilateral security ties and offered a new assessment on Pyongyang's growing stockpile of plutonium, a fissile material used to build nuclear bombs, Yonhap reports.

"As the North defined us as an 'undoubted enemy' at the plenary meeting of the ruling party's Central Committee in December 2022, and continues to pose a military threat without renouncing its nuclear program, the North Korean regime and military -- the executor of that (threat) -- are our enemy," the paper reads.

The South called the North's military an "enemy" in the white paper in 1995 after a Pyongyang official threatened to turn Seoul into a "sea of flames." In the 2004 version, the expression was replaced by a "direct military threat" amid a conciliatory mood.

The labelling was reinstated in 2010 as the North torpedoed a South Korean corvette in March of that year, killing 46 sailors, and launched an artillery attack on a border island in November, killing two soldiers and two civilians. The expression stayed until the 2016 edition.

But the description disappeared in the 2018 and 2020 editions issued under the then-liberal Moon Jae-in administration that tried notably to promote inter-Korean reconciliation.

In its reference to Japan, the latest document used the expression "close neighbour" for the first time since the 2018 edition: "ROK [South Korea] and Japan share values and Japan is a close neighbouring country that (ROK should cooperate with to) build future cooperative relations that serve common interests.”