Talks Begin on Disarming Korean Border Village

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/16/world/asia/korea-border-dmz-disarm.html

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SEOUL, South Korea — Officials from North and South Korea and the United Nations began talks on Tuesday to turn a border village into an unarmed neutral enclave where military guards and tourists from both sides would move freely across the demarcation line.

The village of Panmunjom, also known as the Joint Security Area, lies inside the Demilitarized Zone, a buffer zone one and a half miles wide that has divided the Korean Peninsula since the Korean War was halted in a truce in 1953. Panmunjom was originally created as a neutral area. But since North Korean soldiers wielding axes killed two American Army officers there in 1976, it has been divided by a demarcation line like the rest of the DMZ, with armed guards from both sides engaged in a tense, daily standoff.

When President Moon Jae-in of South Korea and North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, met last month in Pyongyang, the North’s capital, both sides agreed to disarm Panmunjom to turn it into what South Korea hopes will become a “symbol of peace” on the divided peninsula.

Under the terms of the Korean War armistice, the American-led United Nations Command, which fought the war on the South’s behalf, administers the southern half of the DMZ. In the next month, the command and representatives from both Koreas will discuss erasing the demarcation line at Panmunjom, disarming their military guards there and moving their sentry posts to the perimeters of the zone, officials said.

Reshaping the role of Panmunjom is part of a series of inter-Korean projects Mr. Moon and Mr. Kim have agreed upon to improve their countries’ relationship and ease military tensions. During a high-level dialogue on Monday, both Koreas also agreed to hold a groundbreaking ceremony on their border in late November or early December to reconnect their railroads and highways.

Later Tuesday, in another sign of improving ties, the North repatriated a 60-year-old South Korean man who entered the North illegally last month, the South’s Unification Ministry said. The South Korean authorities were interrogating the man, who was identified only by his last name, Pyo.

But the speed of inter-Korean engagement, including the fate of many of those projects, depends on whether the United Nations Security Council will ease sanctions against the North because they will eventually involve South Korean investments there.

In a meeting in Paris on Monday with the French president, Emmanuel Macron, Mr. Moon suggested that the Security Council, where France is one of the five permanent members, start easing sanctions by the time the process of denuclearizing North Korea has become “irreversible.”

Mr. Moon reiterated that South Korea remained committed to enforcing United Nations sanctions against North Korea, dismissing concerns in Washington that his country was too eager to improve inter-Korean ties as American efforts to rid North Korea of its nuclear weapons were stalling.

But Mr. Moon also stressed that sanctions would have to be eased for North Korea to conclude that giving up its nuclear weapons was “a right choice” and that it should “expedite its denuclearization.” He did not say what steps North Korea would take to persuade Washington and its allies that its progress toward denuclearization was “irreversible.”

“Chairman Kim Jong-un told me that he was willing not just to stop testing nuclear weapons and missiles and dismantle the facilities that produce them, but also to dispose of all the nuclear weapons and fissile materials his country owns now, if the United States takes corresponding steps,” said Mr. Moon, who has met Mr. Kim three times since April.

North Korea has resisted Washington’s demand that it quickly dismantle and ship out all of its nuclear weapons and fissile materials. Instead, it envisions denuclearization as taking place in sequenced “phases” for which it demands “simultaneous” incentives from Washington.

One of the corresponding steps North Korea has demanded from Washington is the easing of sanctions.

President Trump has claimed “tremendous progress” in his efforts to denuclearize North Korea, noting that it has conducted no nuclear or missile tests this year. But he also insists that sanctions remain intact until North Korea is disarmed.

”No, I’m not doing it,” he said Sunday on the CBS News program “60 Minutes” when he was asked about easing sanctions. “I haven’t eased the sanctions. I haven’t done anything.”

In a commentary on Tuesday, the North’s official Korean Central News Agency said that Mr. Trump should lift sanctions in return for North Korea’s cooperation for the “big progress which he bragged about.” It also argued that Washington’s refusal to ease sanctions made it harder for Mr. Kim to persuade his people that their country could survive without nuclear weapons because the sanctions confirmed American “hostility.”

“Our people say that the Americans are such a narrow-minded superpower who only wants to receive, never giving anything,” it said.

Mr. Trump and Mr. Kim met in Singapore in June in the first summit meeting between leaders of the two nations. Their aides are negotiating the terms of a second meeting that Mr. Trump said could take place after the midterm elections in November.