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Koreas agree to work to end threat of war |
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September 27, 2000
CHEJU (AP) - The defense ministers of South and North Korea, whose armies have faced off against each other for half a century, ended two days of talks Tuesday with a pledge to diminish the threat of war on their peninsula. South Korean Defense Minister Cho Sung-tae and Kim Il Chul, minister for the People's Army of North Korea, said they would meet again in mid-November in North Korea to discuss tension-easing measures. Although results of the meeting fell short of South Korean hopes, both sides were satisfied with the symbolism of the defense chiefs of two once-bitterly opposed countries negotiating for the first time. "The significance of the meeting is that the military chiefs of both sides, which had been hostile to each other for 50 years, sat together," said Lt. Gen. Kim Hee-sang, a South Korean spokesman. The ministers agreed to arrange working-level talks in early October to discuss how to reconnect a cross-border rail line, according to the statement. That operation will include the tricky task of clearing some of the hundreds of thousands of mines that lie in the Demilitarized Zone, or DMZ, a buffer zone that separates the two Koreas. Both sides also agreed to discuss the issue of designating control of DMZ areas along the rail line to South and North Korean troops in accordance with terms of the armistice that ended the 1950-53 Korean War. South Korean officials had hoped the talks on Cheju, a resort island off South Korea's southern coast, might yield other concrete results, including the establishment of a military hotline and notification of troop movements and observation of military exercises. But the North Koreans appeared more comfortable with rhetorical statements such as a declaration that both sides would support the agreements of a June summit of their leaders. At that historic meeting, South Korean President Kim Dae-jung and North Korean leader Kim Jong Il agreed to promote peace and seek eventual reunification. "Both sides agreed that it is important to establish permanent, solid peace on the Korean peninsula to get rid of the danger of war," the ministers said in a joint statement. North Korea's overseas news outlet, KCNA, released an English translation of the statement shortly after the South announced it. The Cheju talks were the first-ever between the heads of the two militaries, which are arrayed on either side of the world's most heavily fortified border. Tensions have remained high since the Korean War, which left several million people dead and ended without a peace treaty. The North Korean delegation was scheduled to return home later Tuesday via the border village of Panmunjom after a meeting with President Kim in Seoul. Plans to reconnect a cross-border railway line that was severed shortly before the Korean War are one of a number of conciliatory gestures that have been taken since the June summit. The two sides have also halted propaganda broadcasts against each other and held a round of reunions of separated family members. Also Tuesday, delegations from both Koreas met in Seoul for the second day to discuss boosting badly needed investment in impoverished North Korea, which depends on outside aid to feed its 22 million people. The Korean Peninsula was divided into communist North Korea and the pro-Western South at the end of World War II. They have periodically engaged in skirmishes and confrontations. |