The North and South Korean militaries on Saturday completed withdrawing troops and firearms from 22 frontline guard posts as they continue to implement a wide-ranging agreement reached in September to reduce tensions across the world’s most fortified border, a South Korean Ministry of National Defense official said.
South Korea has said that the military agreement is an important trust-building step that would help stabilize peace and advance reconciliation between the rivals, but critics have said that the South risks conceding some of its conventional military strength before North Korea takes any meaningful steps on denuclearization — an anxiety that is growing as the nuclear negotiations between Washington and Pyongyang seemingly drift into a stalemate.
South Korea reportedly has about 60 guard posts — bunker-like concrete structures surrounded with layers of barbed-wire fences and staffed by soldiers with machine guns — stretched across the ironically named Demilitarized Zone (DMZ).
The 248km border buffer peppered with millions of landmines has been the site of occasional skirmishes between the two forces since the 1950-to-1953 Korean War. The North is believed to have about 160 guard posts within the DMZ.
In the agreement, reached on the sidelines of a summit in Pyongyang between North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in, the Koreas pledged to eventually withdraw all guard posts within the DMZ, but to start by removing 11 from each side as a “preliminary” measure.
The defense ministry official said that soldiers on Saturday completed disarming 11 guard posts on the southern side of the DMZ, and the ministry believed that the North had also finished withdrawing personnel and weapons from 11 guard posts on the northern side of the DMZ.
He did not want to be named, citing office rules.
The Koreas plan to destroy 20 of the structures by the end of the month, while symbolically leaving one demilitarized guard post on each side. They plan to jointly verify the results in next month.
The Koreas in the deal also agreed to create buffer zones along their land and sea boundaries and a no-fly zone above the border, which took effect on Nov. 1.
The Koreas and the US-led UN Command recently finished removing firearms and troops from a jointly controlled area at the border village of Panmunjom and eventually plan to allow tourists to freely move around there. They have also been clearing mines from front-line areas and in April next year plan to start their first-ever joint search for remains of soldiers killed during the war.
OUT OF OPTIONS
While the Korean militaries move ahead with tension-reducing steps, Moon is otherwise running out of goodwill gestures toward North Korea, which is under heavy US-led sanctions over its nuclear weapons program.
Unless the sanctions are lifted, it would be impossible for Moon to push ahead with his more ambitious plans for engagement, such as reconnecting railways and roads across the border, and normalizing operations at a jointly run factory park.
Pyongyang has insisted that sanctions should be removed before there is any progress in nuclear negotiations, while Washington has said they will remain until the North takes concrete steps toward irreversibly and verifiably relinquishing its weapons.
Analysts said the discord might have caused the last-minute cancellation of a meeting between US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and North Korean to official Kim Yong-chol, which had been scheduled for Thursday last week to discuss denuclearization issues and setting up a second summit between Kim Jong-un and US President Donald Trump.
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