Military talks aim to ease tensions
Discussions focus on border region as Pompeo seeks to clarify Trump’s tweets
The rival Koreas have held rare high-level military talks to discuss reducing tensions across their heavily fortified border.
It was thought that North Korean officials during the talks at the border village of Panmunjom would seek a firm commitment from the South on stopping its military drills with the United States.
United States President Donald Trump said after his summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on Tuesday that the allies should stop the war games during nuclear negotiations in “good faith”. South Korea’s presidential office has said it’s trying to discern Trump’s meaning and intent, but also that the allies should explore various ways to “further facilitate” dialogue with the North.
Seoul’s Defence Ministry said the military talks would focus on carrying out agreements from a summit between Kim and South Korean President Moon Jae In in which they vowed to take steps to reduce military tensions and eliminate the danger of war.
The discussions are the first general-level talks between the militaries since December 2007.
“We will invest our best efforts to bring in a new era of peace on the Korean Peninsula,” South Korean Major General Kim Do Gyun told reporters before the talks.
US Secretary of State Mike pompeo, meanwhile, told the foreign ministers of South Korea, Kang Kyung Wha, and Japan, Taro Kono, that there would be no sanctions relief for North Korea until it denuclearises.
Pompeo is pushing back on a report from North Korean official state media that said Trump and Kim had agreed to a “step-by-step” process. That was interpreted as meaning the US would grant concessions to North Korea concessions along the way despite longstanding US insistence that it would not.
Pompeo said in Seoul that “we're going to get denuclearisation” and that “only then will there be relief from the sanctions”.
He also said said the US was hopeful North Korea would take “major” disarmament steps before the end of Trump's first term in office, which concludes in January 2021.
Pompeo also did his best to explain a tweet from Trump that claimed North Korea no longer posed a nuclear threat, saying the President made the statement “with eyes wide open”.
After returning from Singapore, Trump tweeted that the world can “sleep well tonight” and that “there is no longer a nuclear threat from North Korea”.
Pompeo said Trump was referring to the fact that for the first time in history, a US president has sat down with a North Korean leader. He said Trump and Kim had a “blunt conversation” about changes needed for North Korea to rejoin the world community.
He also said Trump was “unequivocal” with Kim about the need for North Korea to return abductees from Japan seized by the North in the 1970s and 1980s.
The military talks, meanwhile, were held at a building on the northern side of Panmunjom, where the South Korean officials were greeted by a North Korean delegation led by Lieutenant General An Ik San, who joked that he was “very jealous” of Major General Kim Do Gyun who he thought was probably the first Korean soldier to cross the military demarcation line that bisects the Koreas by foot and while wearing a uniform.
Kim Do Gyun told An that he was honoured to meet him and expressed hope for a meaningful breakthrough in the talks.
An didn’t get his history right — top North Korean military official Hwang Pyong So, in uniform, stepped into the southern side of Panmunjom on August 2015 for talks with South Korean government officials.
The Korean military officials were expected to discuss holding military talks on a regular basis and establishing a hotline between their top military officials, and efforts to recover the remains of soldiers missing and presumed dead from the 1950-53 Korean War.
Moon met Kim Jong Un in April and again in May as Pyongyang made a diplomatic push following a pro- vocative run of nuclear and missile tests last year. The Koreas have agreed to various sets of peace talks, including planned discussions to set up reunions between war-separated families and to field combined teams at the Asian Games in Jakarta, Indonesia, in August.
The Korean Peninsula remains technically at war, because the 1950-53 conflict ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty.
Annual military drills between Washington and Seoul have long been a major source of contention
between the Koreas. North Korea, which sees the exercises as invasion rehearsals, last month broke off a high-level meeting with Seoul over South Korea’s participation in a twoweek military exercise with the United States.
A second summit between Kim and Moon, in late May, put the seniorlevel talks between the Koreas back on track. Still, North Korea’s state media continued its criticism of allied military exercises, demanding Washington days later “stop the acts of threatening its dialogue partner by force”. Since the 1970s, the US and South Korea have held a major summertime exercise called Ulchi Freedom Guardian that involves tens of thousands of troops.
Critics say the allies would be sending a bad signal to North Korea if they stop the drills before the North takes concrete steps toward denuclearisation.
There are lingering doubts on whether Kim would ever agree to fully relinquish the weapons he may see as his strongest guarantee of survival.