Seoul, Jan 19 : A major indoctrination facility in North Korea displayed banners calling South Korea the "No. 1 hostile country" and inciting public animosity against Seoul, photos released by the North's media showed on Monday.

The state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) published the photos while reporting on North Koreans touring the Central Class Education House in Pyongyang as part of celebrations marking the 80th founding anniversary of the Socialist Patriotic Youth League, the country's largest youth organisation.

The class education house is a propaganda facility that fosters antagonism toward Seoul and Washington among the public, Yonhap News Agency reported, quoting KCNA.

The KCNA photos showed rows of uniformed soldiers listening to a guide in a hall displaying banners, photos and painted messages against South Korea.

The banners read, "South Korea is the No. 1 hostile country and the unchanging archenemy," and accused Seoul of creating a "confrontational frenzy" aimed at upending North Korea and "ending the regime."

The messages included an article of South Korea's Constitution defining the country's territory as the entire Korean Peninsula, in what appears to be an accusation that Seoul intends to unify the North by absorption.

In a parliamentary address in September last year, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un denounced the constitutional article as codifying what he called "the most hostile true colour by nature."

At a year-end party meeting in December 2023, Kim declared inter-Korean relations as those between "two states hostile to each other" and has since pursued hostile policies toward Seoul, including a pledge during a parliamentary speech in 2024 to strengthen education aimed at getting the public to regard the South as the No. 1 hostile country and archenemy of the North.

/IANS