SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea proposed talks with North Korea to make clear the rivals’ border line and ease army tensions, saying Monday that North Korean troopers’ repeated border intrusions have raised worries about an armed conflict.
South Korea’s army says it has been firing warning shots to repel North Korean troops who violated the border’s army demarcation line quite a few instances since they started partaking in work to spice up front-line defenses final yr. North Korea has denied that and threatened unspecified responses, saying its troopers labored inside the North’s territory.
Kim Hong-Cheol, South Korean deputy minister for nationwide protection coverage, stated Monday that South Korea was providing army talks to stop an unintended armed conflict and decrease tensions with North Korea.
Kim stated that the North’s border intrusions had been probably brought on by the rivals’ totally different views on the border line, as a result of lots of the army demarcation line posts established on the finish of the 1950-53 Korean Struggle 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 supply 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 goals 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 army stated that it has since detected North Korea including anti-tank limitations 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 heavily armed frontiers. An estimated 2 million mines are peppered inside and close to the border, which can be guarded by barbed-wire fences, tank traps and fight troops on each side. It’s a legacy of the Korean Struggle, which ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty.
