North Korea has designated South Korea a "hostile state", its state media said on Thursday (October 17), confirming that its national assembly had amended the country's constitution in line with their leader Kim Jong Un's vow to drop unification as a national goal.

The North's KCNA news agency released on Tuesday (October 15) still photographs, which Reuters cannot independently verify, that showed explosions near the inter-Korean border and said its military had blasted sections of road and rail links with the South as legitimate measures taken against a hostile state as defined by North Korea's constitution.

One of KCNA's photographs appeared to be similar to what the South Korean military released earlier this week, Yonhap news agency reported.

North Korea's state-run broadcaster KRT aired footage on Wednesday (October 16) of students signing up to enlist in the military.

Around 1.4 million young people applied to join or return to the army this week, said North Korean state media, blaming Seoul for a provocative drone incursion that had brought the "tense situation to the brink of war". - report from Reuters