SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea proposed talks with North Korea to make clear the rivals’ border line and ease navy tensions, saying Monday that North Korean troopers’ repeated border intrusions have raised worries about an armed conflict.
South Korea’s navy says it has been firing warning pictures to repel North Korean troops who violated the border’s navy demarcation line quite a few occasions since they started participating in work to spice up front-line defenses final yr. North Korea has denied that and threatened unspecified responses, saying its troopers labored throughout the North’s territory.
Kim Hong-Cheol, South Korean deputy minister for nationwide protection coverage, stated Monday that South Korea was providing navy talks to stop an unintentional armed conflict and decrease tensions with North Korea.
Kim stated that the North’s border intrusions had been seemingly brought on by the rivals’ completely different views on the border line, as a result of lots of the navy demarcation line posts established on the finish of the 1950-53 Korean Battle have been misplaced.
It is unclear if North Korea would settle for South Korea’s requires talks, as a result of it has been shunning all types of dialogue with South Korea and the U.S. since its chief Kim Jong Un’s high-stakes nuclear diplomacy with U.S. President Donald Trump fell aside in 2019. Some observers say South Korea’s provide for talks was a part of efforts by its liberal authorities led by President Lee Jae Myung to reopen communication channels with North Korea.
Final yr, Kim declared that North Korea was abandoning its long-standing targets of a peaceable unification between the Koreas and ordered the rewriting of the North’s structure to mark the South as a everlasting enemy. South Korea’s navy stated that it has since detected North Korea including anti-tank obstacles and planting extra mines at border areas.
The Koreas’ 248-kilometer-long (155-mile-long), four-kilometer-wide (2½-mile-wide) border is among the world’s most closely armed frontiers. An estimated 2 million mines are peppered inside and close to the border, which can also be guarded by barbed-wire fences, tank traps and fight troops on each side. It’s a legacy of the Korean Battle, which ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty.
