General-level officers from South Korea and the North Korea
resumed talks Thursday at the truce village of Panmunjom on easing
tension along their disputed sea border.
The two-day meeting at Tongilgak, a North Korean administrative
building inside this neutral border zone border village, is the
third round of its kind.
"I feel great responsibility for this job, out of hope that
progress should be made toward easing tension on the Korean
Peninsula," the chief South Korean delegate, Maj. Gen. Han Min-koo,
was quoted by South Korean Yonhap News Agency as saying before the
talks start.
According to the South Korean Defense Ministry, prevention of
armed conflict at the controversial inter-Korean sea border in the
Yellow Sea and establishment of a joint fishing area around the
disputed sea border will be at the top of the agenda.
The Northern Limit Line (NLL) was marked after the 1950-1953
Korean War by the United Nations Command. South Korea viewed it as
the inter-Korean western sea border, while North Korea has not
accepted the concept.
The navies of the two sides once had two clashes in 1999 and
2002 around of the NLL waters, which resulted in heavy casualties
on both sides.
In two previous rounds of general-level talks held in Summer of
2004, the two sides agreed on a set of tension-reducing measures
such as dismantlement of propaganda facilities along the land
border called the Military Demarcation line (MDL) but those
agreements were not fully implemented.
According to South Korean officials, the agenda of this week's
military talks also includes a proposal for the two sides to
militarily guarantee the security of a set of cross-border
railways.
The rail lines, one through the western section of the border
and the other across the eastern part, were completed but have yet
undergone test-runs. A set of parallel roads opened to service last
year for South Koreans traveling to North Korea.
A security guarantee for the cross-border rail links by the two
sides' militaries is necessary. Former South Korean President and
Nobel laureate Kim Dae-jung wants to visit North Korea by train in
June for a second meeting with leader Kim Jong-il. The two met in
Pyongyang in 2000.
(Xinhua News Agency March 2, 2006)
