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Korean defense chiefs meet |
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September 25, 2000
CHEJU, South Korea (AP) -- The defense ministers of South and North Korea held reconciliation talks Monday for the first time in five decades of hostility across the world's most heavily fortified border. The meeting between South Korean Defense Minister Cho Sung-tae and Kim Il Chul, minister of the People's Army of North Korea, marked one of the most significant steps toward establishing friendly relations on the divided Korean Peninsula since a June summit of the leaders of both Koreas. Dressed in an olive green uniform, Kim smiled and shook hands with Cho, a former general, at the beginning of their highly symbolic talks in a five-star hotel. Delegates from both sides included generals and colonels. "I feel a great sense of responsibility, given all the expectations for these talks,'' Kim told Cho. The two sides planned to hold two rounds of talks in this resort island of tangerine groves and volcanic cones before the Northern delegation returns home Tuesday. South Korean officials doubt whether sweeping measures that will ease tension across the peninsula can be achieved in this first meeting. But the fact that the two defense chiefs were discussing cooperation was seen as a great stride toward peace on the peninsula. Their border is guarded by nearly 2 million battle-ready troops on both sides, barbed wire, minefields, and artillery and missiles that can reach each other's capitals. The two countries' defense ministers have never met since the division of the peninsula in 1945. The Pentagon still regards the North's 1.1-million troop military -- armed with chemical and biological weapons and developing long-range missiles -- as one of the greatest security threats in Northeast Asia. Washington keeps 37,000 U.S. soldiers in South Korea as a deterrent against the North. North Korea wants the talks to focus mainly on how Southern and Northern forces can help reconnect a cross-border railway line and build a highway linking the two countries. Reconnecting the rail line, severed shortly before the 1950-53 Korean War, is part of a series of agreements struck between the two Koreas since the June summit. That project will entail the removal of up to 100,000 land mines planted in the area of the rail corridor -- and coordination between the two armies operating in the potentially volatile Demilitarized Zone, or DMZ, that separates the two Koreas. The South Koreans, however, also want to discuss establishment of a military hot line as well as the notification of large troop movements and observation of major military exercises. Also Monday, delegations from both Koreas met in Seoul to discuss boosting badly needed investment in the impoverished, communist North. Since the presidents of South and North met in June, the two sides have stopped propaganda broadcasts, allowed one round of reunions of people separated by the Korean War and taken other conciliatory steps. The Korean Peninsula was divided into North Korea and the pro-Western South at the end of World War II. Their three-year war ended without a peace treaty in 1953. The two armed forces occasionally engaged in skirmishes, including a June 1999 naval clash in which 30 Northern sailors were believed to have died when one of their torpedo boats was hit and sunk. |