International
Min Gyeong-seok / News1 / Reuters
As marathon negotiations by senior officials from the rival Koreas stretched into a third day, South Korea's president said Monday that anti-Pyongyang propaganda broadcasts will continue unless North Korea apologizes for planting land mines that maimed two South Korean soldiers.
The comments by Park Geun-hye suggest both a hard line stance and mounting frustration in Seoul. Her comments provide hint at why the talks, which started Saturday evening have dragged on into a second session that began Sunday afternoon and was still going 24 hours later, on Monday.
For the time being, the diplomacy has pushed aside previous heated warnings of imminent war, but South Korea's military said North Korea continued to prepare for a fight, moving unusual numbers of troops and submarines to the border.
North Korea is refusing to apologize for what Seoul says was a land mine attack earlier this month and then an artillery barrage last week. North Korea denies both attacks and demands that Seoul stop the propaganda broadcasts started in retaliation for the land mine explosions.
These are the highest-level talks between the two Koreas in a year. And just the fact that senior officials from countries that have spent recent days vowing to destroy each other are sitting together at a table in Panmunjom, the border enclave where the 1953 armistice ending fighting in the Korean War was agreed to, is something of a victory.
The length of the talks — nearly 10 hours for the first session and more than 18 for the second — and the lack of immediate progress are not unusual. While the Koreas often have difficulty agreeing to talks, once they do, overlong sessions are often the rule. After decades of animosity and bloodshed, however, finding common ground is much harder.
President Park said during a meeting with top aides that Seoul would not "stand down even if North Korea ratchets up provocation to its highest level and threatens our national security."
She said Seoul needs "a definite apology" and a promise that such provocations would not recur.
Yoo Ho-yeol, a professor of North Korean studies at Korea University in Seoul, said the unusually long session was a good sign. "They are not talking for the sake of a breakdown but for the sake of agreement. There must be a lot of fine-tuning and convincing between the two parties," Yoo said.
The decision to hold talks came hours ahead of a Saturday deadline set by North Korea for the South to dismantle the propaganda loudspeakers. North Korea had declared that its front-line troops were on war readiness and prepared to go to battle if Seoul did not back down.
South Korea said that even as the North was pursuing dialogue, its troops were preparing for battle.
An official from Seoul's Defense Ministry said that about 70 percent of the North's more than 70 submarines and undersea vehicles had left their bases and were undetectable by the South Korean military as of Saturday. The official, who refused to be named because of official rules, also said the North had doubled the strength of its front-line artillery forces since the start of the talks Saturday evening.
South Korean military officials wouldn't confirm or deny but seemed to cast doubt Monday on a Yonhap news agency report, citing unidentified military sources, that said North Korea had moved toward the border about 10 hovercraft used for landings by special operation forces in the event of a war.
Defense Ministry spokesman Kim Min-seok said the truth is "a bit different" than what was reported but wouldn't provide further details.
Meanwhile, the United States, which has 28,500 soldiers based in South Korea, is conducting annual joint military exercises with the South. North Korea regularly condemns the maneuvers as a preparation for war.
The current standoff started with the explosions of land mines on the southern side of the Demilitarized Zone between the Koreas that Seoul says were planted by North Korea. In response, the South resumed anti-Pyongyang propaganda broadcasts for the first time in 11 years, infuriating the North, which is extremely sensitive to any criticism of its authoritarian system.
Analysts say the North fears that the broadcasts could demoralize its front-line troops and inspire them to defect.
On Thursday, South Korea's military fired dozens of artillery rounds across the border in response to what Seoul said were North Korean artillery strikes meant to back up an earlier threat to attack the loudspeakers.
The Defense Ministry official said the South continued the anti-Pyongyang broadcasts even after the start of the talks Saturday and also after the second session began Sunday. He said Seoul would decide after the talks whether to halt the broadcasts.
While the meeting offered a way for the rivals to avoid an immediate collision, analysts in Seoul wondered whether the countries were standing too far apart to expect a quick agreement.
South Korea probably can't afford to walk away with a weak agreement after it had openly vowed to stem a "vicious cycle" of North Korean provocations amid public anger over the land mines, said Koh Yu-hwan, a North Korea expert at Seoul's Dongguk University.
At the meeting, South Korea's presidential national security director, Kim Kwan-jin, and Unification Minister Hong Yong-pyo sat down with Hwang Pyong So, the top political officer for the Korean People's Army, and Kim Yang Gon, a senior North Korean official responsible for South Korean affairs. Hwang is considered by outside analysts to be North Korea's second most important official after supreme leader Kim Jong Un.
In Pyongyang, North Korean state media reported that more than 1 million young people have volunteered to join or rejoin the military to defend their country should a conflict break out.
Despite such rhetoric, which is not particularly unusual, activity in the North's capital remained calm on Sunday, with people going about their daily routines. Instead of anxiously awaiting the outcome of the talks, many Pyongyang residents were riveted to TVs in public places to watch the debut of the "Boy General" cartoon show, which has been revamped for the first time in five years at the order of Kim Jong Un.
Wire services
Launched after two South Korean soldiers were hurt by land mines, the radio broadcasts are the first in 11 years
Seoul said Pyongyang escalated its response to South Korean propaganda to live fire. Harry Fawcett reports.
S. Korea news says UN military command has offered de-escalation talks after North and South exchange artillery fire
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