The defense ministry referred to North Korea as an “enemy” in its biennial policy paper on Thursday for the first time in six years in an apparent testament to the Yoon Suk Yeol administration’s hardline stance against the North.

The hostile classification in the 2022 Defense White Paper, the defense ministry’s first released under the Yoon government, comes after the North defined South Korea as an "undoubted enemy" in a plenary meeting of the ruling party's Central Committee last December.

The paper states that Pyongyang continues to pose a military threat without renouncing its nuclear program, updating its estimate on the amount of plutonium the North possesses to about 70 kilograms along with a “considerable” amount of highly enriched uranium.

The ministry’s document cited the North’s repeated violations of the two Koreas' 2018 tension-diffusing military agreement as it shelled within the "maritime buffer zone," fired a missile south of the maritime border and conducted drone incursions.

Meanwhile, the policy book described Japan as a "close neighbor" for the first time since 2018, in line with Seoul's move to improve bilateral security ties.