Koreas agree to restore military communication lines
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — The rival Koreas agreed Thursday to fully restore their cross-border communication lines after holding rare high-level military talks on reducing tensions.
The military officials also discussed temporarily disarming an area in their jointly controlled truce village of Panmunjom, where soldiers from the North and South stand several feet from each other across the demarcation line that divides their countries, South Korea’s Defense Ministry said.
It wasn’t immediately clear whether North Korean officials brought up the South’s military drills with the United States during the talks at Panmunjom.
U.S. President Donald Trump said after his summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on Tuesday that the allies should stop the war games while nuclear negotiations are being held 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 Defense Ministry said the military talks focused on implementing her compatriots will show “maturity and forbearance” amid the tensions.
“But as these kinds of absurd statements and rude outbursts pile up, antagonism and resentment might too, which would be terribly unfortunate and even surreal for two of the agreements at an earlier summit between Kim and South Korean President Moon Jae-in, in which they vowed to reduce military tensions and eliminate the danger of war.
The discussions were the first general-level talks between the militaries since December 2007.
South Korea had pushed hard for the restoration of the military the best neighbors on the planet,” Goetz said.
Resentment already is palpable. A popular Alberta-based travel and culture blogger, Mike Morrison, said he and his wife have canceled a trip to the U.S. next month.
In Halton Hills, a Toronto communication lines, which it says will be valuable in defusing crises. North Korea in February 2016 shut down a line that had been used for military communication around the western coast of the peninsula to protest South Korea’s decision to shut down a North Korean factory park that had been jointly operated by the countries. The South had been reacting to a North Korean nuclear test. The communication line was partially restored in January following the North’s diplomatic outreach to the South ahead of February’s South Korean Winter Olympics.
During Thursday’s meeting, the military officials also agreed to restore a military communication line along the eastern coat that the North shut down in 2011.