Negotiations begin on disarming border village
SEOUL — 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 1½ 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 U.S. 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 South Korea President Moon Jae In 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 U.S.-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 Moon and 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. Choe Sang Hun is a New York Times writer.