The U.S. should ask Seoul to renounce support for the goal of inter-Korean confederation in order to frustrate Pyongyang’s long-term desire to rule over the South, the academic and long-time Korea analyst B.R. Myers said on Tuesday.

North Korea is building nuclear weapons to compel a peaceful withdrawal of U.S. troops, subsequent breakup of the alliance, and eventual DPRK-led unification of the peninsula, Myers said in a Royal Asiatic Society presentation about what he described as Pyongyang’s “unification drive.”

“It follows that America’s most urgent task is to call publicly on Seoul to disabuse the North of its hopes,” Myers