North and South Korea agree to joint volcano research

South Korean delegate Yoo In-chang (R) shakes hand with North Korean delegate Yun Yong-geun
Source: Korea Herald

North and South Korea held talks at the South Korean border town of Munsan on Tuesday 29th March about setting up a joint study on the volcanic threat emanating from Mount Baekdu.

Tensions between the neighbours are higher than they've been for decades, and military talks in February collapsed. As such, the talks at Munsan were a highly anticipated opportunity for dialogue, and seem to have been successful.

The two sides did not agree on a date for the next round of talks, although the North suggested early April, and the South is expected to respond soon.

The earthquake in Japan seems to have prompted the discussion, and both sides seem to have accepted that potential damage both sides face from natural disasters. Head of the North Korean delegation Yun Yong-geun told his South Korean counterparts “We had underground water fluctuating by 60cm and muddy spring water after the Japanese quake.”

“We no longer can be fully sure about anything when it comes to meteorological occurrences,” he said in the first few minutes of the meeting, which was open to media.

Yun said that Pyongyang was actively looking for signs of radiation reaching the North, while Seoul has already detected traces of fallout from the Fukushima nuclear plant, but has said the amounts are too small to pose risks.

Pyongyang proposed the talks after Japan's earthquake and while Seoul downgraded them from government to expert level, they are still significant. South Korean unification minister Hyun In-taek said last week that joint research could develop into a 'whole new level' of inter-Korean cooperation, according to the Korea Times.

Mount Baekdu has not erupted since 1903, but it is believed to have an active core. Located on the North Korea-China border, it is the highest mountain on the Korean peninsula, standing at 2,744m. Concerns over the mountain have persisted since 2002, when a magnitude 7.3 earthquake hit northeastern China. The mountain is considered a sacred symbol of ancestry by both sides, and the BBC reports that North Korea says its leader Kim Jong-Il was born there.

Experts have warned that an eruption could pose widespread problems for both sides, and so Seoul agreed to the talks out of fear of another regional disaster.

While China and North Korea have called for the resumption of six-party talks on Pyongyang's nuclear programme, Seoul has said it first requires an apology for what it calls two acts of aggression by the North.

Seoul holds Pyongyang responsible for the sinking of a warship, the Cheonan, in March last year, although Pyongyang has denied involvement. Seoul also wants an apology for the shelling of Yeonpyeong Island last November, but Pyongyang says it was provoked.

Sources: BBC News, Korea Herald, Korea Times

For more information, please see the Menas Borders website, here.

South Korea prepares for first anniversary of Cheonan sinking

Preparations are underway for military drills to mark the Cheonan anniversary

With the first anniversary of the sinking of South Korean warship approaching, South Korea and their US allies are preparing to mark the date with what might be seen as a rather provocative gesture: major live-fire military drills.

The South Korean corvette Cheonan was sunk on 26th March last year. A Seoul-led international investigation blamed North Korea for the attack, a claim which Pyongyang has denied.

Seoul and the US have been carrying out annual drills since late February. They completed computerised war games on 10th March, but joint field training will continue throughout March and April.

They are currently in the middle of a three day joint military amphibious logistic support exercise in the West Sea that ends Thursday 24th March. Large-scale maritime maneouvers in the East, West and South Seas will take place from Friday to Sunday to mark the first anniversary of the sinking of the Cheonan. Live-fire drills will also be carried in the West and South Seas on Saturday, the day of the sinking.

North Korea sees the drills as a rehearsal for invasion, and consistently protests about them. North Korea disputes the UN-established maritime border in the West Sea (also known as the Yellow Sea) and objects to the south carrying out live fire drills in territory it considers to be its own.

North Korea has also recently accused US troops of trespassing into the Demilitarized Zone and has said that South Korea would have to take responsibility for action resulting from the 'provocations', including 'human damage', according to the southern Korea Herald. The north's military has apparently sent a notice to the south, claiming that some 100 US troops made 50 trespasses into the area from 1-8th March, without any prior notification about their entry.

Another issue causing tensions between the two is that of southern activists and North Korean defectors ballooning anti-north leaflets into northern territory. According to the Korea Herald, a group plans to launch propaganda leaflets on Friday or Saturday this week from the frontier island of Paekryong, despite Pyongyang's threats of artillery retaliation.

They plan to drop some 200,000 leaflets containing news of the Arab uprisings and calling for the overthrow of Kim Jong-Il's regime.

The North Korean military has urged South Korea to halt what it calls 'psychological warfare' immediately and have threatened retribution.

Tensions between the two neighbours have been high since the sinking of the Cheonan a year ago. US-South Korea naval drills in disputed waters in November led to the north firing artillery at Yeonpyeong island, killing four.

The two sides are still technically at war, having never resolved the 1950-3 dispute, and South Korea's continual military action in what it knows to be disputed waters is certainly not helping to reduce tensions. Military talks between the two sides in early February ended in failure.

Sources: Korea Herald, Xinhua, ABC News

For more information, please see the Menas Borders website, here.

Border Focus: North and South Korea

A South Koreans soldier patrols the DMZ

What is disputed?

In essence, the whole peninsula is disputed, as both the North and the South theoretically seek reunification upon their own ideological lines: neoliberal social democracy for the South and a militant communism for the North. But reunification has become an increasingly distant dream over the past half century as the systems have become fully entrenched in their respective spheres. On a more immediate basis, tension between the two countries centres around their border onshore, the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), and their UN-designed maritime border, the Northern Limit Line (NLL).

What is the history of the dispute?The two Koreas were unified until the end of World War II. They were governed by the Korean Empire until it was brought under the Japanese sphere of influence following the Russo-Japanese War of 1905, and it was eventually annexed in 1910.

It was divided into Soviet and American occupied zones along the 38th parallel, when the Japanese were forced to relinquish control at the end of World War II. UN-supervised elections were held in the south in 1948, but when the North refused to participate, separate governments were created for each area.

Both nations, however, continued to claim sovereignty over the Korean Peninsula as a whole, and this led to the Korean War (1950-53), when the Soviet–backed North Koreans invaded. The UN, and especially the US, came to the defence of the South, and they succeeded in pushing the North’s troops beyond the original border. Fresh from its own civil war, Communist China came to the North’s defence and an 1953 armistice re-established the border near the 38th parallel. The Armistice Agreement of 1953 ended the fighting, but both nations are officially still at war as a peace treaty was never signed.

In the ceasefire of 1953, the DMZ was created, when each side agreed to move their troops back 2km from what had been the front line, creating a buffer zone 4km wide. The Military Demarcation Line (MDL) indicates exactly where the front was when the agreement was signed.

The MDL was extended into the sea by the US-led UN military forces after the ceasefire, and this Northern Limit Line now serves as the de facto maritime boundary. The 1953 Armistice Agreement specified that the UN Command (ie South Korea) would retain control of five islands, including Yeonpyeong and Baengnyeong Islands. The NLL was not part of the actual Armistice Agreement because the two sides could not agree how the territorial sea should be measured: the UN favoured three nautical miles, while the North favoured 12. The NLL, unsurprisingly, adopts the UN preferred option.

While both sides acknowledge the DMZ as the border between the two, the North does not accept the NLL, and since 1999 has been arguing in favour of a more southerly ‘West Sea Military Demarcation’.

How serious is the dispute?

The dispute between the two Korea’s is very serious, not only for the people living on the peninsula, but because any dispute between the two threatens to involve their international backers: the US for the South and China for the North.

Since the 1950s the tension on the peninsula has remained high and there have been numerous border clashes. A series of low-level armed clashes around the DMZ area between 1966-69 has been called the Second Korean War by some; there have been numerous assassination attempts on South Korean presidents by the North; and the North has dug at least four tunnels crossing under the DMZ in what appears to be preparation for a military strike. The North claims that they are for coal mining, and the walls have been painted black to give the appearance of coal.

The South, and their American allies are not innocent either, and there have been numerous incidents of American helicopters and other aircrafts invading northern airspace. They have been shot down on at least two occasions.

There have been political wrangling as well as military, including the bizarre 'flagpole war' of the 1980s. The South Korean government installed a 98.4m tall flagpole with a 130kg South Korean flag in Daeseong-dong, a South Korean town that lies within the DMZ. In retaliation, the North promptly built what was then the tallest flatpole in the world at 160m, with a 270kg North Korean flag, near Panmunjom, the town on the MDL where the Armistice talks took place in 1953.

Also on the MDL is the Joint Security Area (JSA), where all negotations since 1953 have taken place. Amusingly, the area has been built so that the MDL goes through conference rooms, and even down the middle of conference tables, so North and South Koreans can meet face to face while remaining on their own jurisdiction.

The NLL has also been the cause of numerous disputes. The fact that it enforces a 3 nautical mile territorial sea has prevented the North from accessing its rightful Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), as dictated under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. As a result, the North does not recognise the line, and its fishing boats consistently work close to, or over, the limit line, often escorted by North Korean naval boats.


What has happened in recent years?

Relations began to improve in the early 1990s, with the 1991 'Agreement on Reconciliation, Nonaggression and Exchanges and Cooperation between the South and the North' (also known as the ‘Basic Agreement’) which acknowledged that reunification was the goal of both governments, and the 1992 'Joint Declaration of the Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula'.