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SEOUL, South Korea (AP) – South Korean troops entered the heavily fortified border with North Korea on Monday to withdraw mines under the agreements reached to ease tensions last month. Seoul said North Korea should also start demining.
Development comes as international diplomacy has renewed its nuclear weapons program after weeks of stalled negotiations. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is due to travel to Pyongyang this month to try to organize a second summit between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
On Monday, units of South Korean army engineers equipped with mine clearance equipment were deployed in the border village of Panmunjom and in another front zone called "Arrow Head Hill", where Korea is preparing his first joint research to find soldiers killed during the Korean War.
Troops will attempt to clear mines on the south of both sites, while North Korea will have to do the same on their northern sides. In Arrow Head Hill, where some of the fiercest battles of the Korean War have unfolded, Seoul officials estimate that there are still about 300 South Korean and US forces, as well as undetermined number of Chinese and North Korean remains.
The Korean War has left millions dead or missing and South Korea wants to expand joint searches with North Korea. Korea remains divided along the 155-mile (248 km) long demilitarized zone that was originally created at the end of the Korean War. About 2 million mines are reported to be scattered in and around the demilitarized zone, which is also protected by hundreds of thousands of soldiers, barbed wire and tank traps on both sides.
South Korean Defense Ministry officials said they could not immediately confirm whether North Korea had also started demining work on Monday. But they said they were expecting the North to abide by the easing of tensions that their defense chiefs made on the sidelines of their leaders' summit last month in Pyongyang.
In an effort to reduce conventional military threats, Korea's defense chiefs also decided to withdraw 11 guard posts by December and create buffer zones along their maritime and land borders as well as an area air exclusion over the border to prevent accidental armed clashes.
Later on Monday, South Korean President Moon Jae-in defended the military agreements which he said would "put an end to all hostile acts on land, sea and sky between North Korea and North Korea." ". In a mid-day speech marking the 70th anniversary of the South Korean armed forces, Moon also called for stronger national defense, saying "peace can only last if we have the power and are confident of to protect us ".
Moon, a liberal aspiring to strengthen ties with Pyongyang, is one of the main drivers of US-North Korean nuclear diplomacy. Critics of its engagement policy have criticized its recent inter-Korean military agreements, saying that a mutual reduction of the conventional military force would eventually weaken South Korea's ability to cope with the war, because the nuclear program of the North remains largely intact.
Many experts say that the fate of inter-Korean agreements may be affected by the way in which nuclear negotiations take place between the United States and North Korea. Past rapprochement efforts have often been stalled following the intensification of an international confrontation over northern nuclear ambitions.
After provocative tests of three intercontinental ballistic missiles and a powerful nuclear weapon last year, North Korea began talks with the United States and South Korea earlier this year, saying that She was willing to reduce more and more her nuclear arsenal. Kim Jong Un subsequently held a series of summits with US, South Korean and Chinese leaders and took steps such as the dismantling of his nuclear testing site.
Nuclear diplomacy has subsequently been paralyzed by controversy over how North Korea is authentic about its commitment to disarmament. But Trump, Pompeo and other US officials have recently reported progress in denuclearization talks with the North. Pompeo will soon be making his third trip to North Korea for interviews.
At the same time, South Korea held a ceremony on Monday marking the recent return of the remains of 64 South Korean soldiers who went missing during the Korean War. They had already been discovered in North Korea during a joint excavation project between 1996 and 2005 between the United States and North Korea. Forensic identification tests in Hawaii have confirmed their membership of the South Korean War, the Seoul Defense Ministry said.
