SEOUL, South Korea will resume all military activities near the Military Demarcation Line and its northwestern border islands for the first time in more than five years, with the full suspension of a 2018 inter-Korean tension reduction pact, the defense ministry said Tuesday.
The announcement came after President Yoon Suk Yeol endorsed a motion to fully suspend the Comprehensive Military Agreement until mutual trust is restored in response to the North’s trash-carrying balloon campaign and jamming of GPS signals in recent days.
“This measure is restoring to normality all military activities by our military, which had been restricted by the 2018 pact,” Cho Chang-rae, deputy defense minister for policy, said in a press briefing, vowing to take “all possible measures” to protect the lives and safety of the South Korean people.
“All responsibility for causing this situation lies with the North Korean regime and if the North attempts to stage additional provocations, our military will sternly retaliate based o
n a firm S. Korea-U.S. combined defense posture,” Cho said.
Signed on Sept. 19, 2018, the suspended deal included setting up a land buffer zone, where artillery drills and regiment-level field maneuvers are to be suspended, and maritime buffer zones, where artillery firing and naval drills are to be banned.
It also designated no-fly zones near the border to prevent accidental aircraft clashes.
With Tuesday’s suspension, South Korea will be able to carry out drills to bolster front-line defenses, with respective units now allowed to draw up training plans near the MDL and the border islands.
The suspension will also allow South Korea to restart loudspeaker propaganda broadcasts toward the North, a key tool for psychological warfare involving criticism of the Kim Jong-un regime’s human rights abuses, news and K-pop songs, which had prompted angry responses from Pyongyang.
Earlier in the day, Joint Chiefs of Staff spokesperson Lee Sung-jun said various measures could be taken after the suspension, noting th
at the military has operated both fixed and mobile loudspeakers on the front lines.
“Fixed loudspeakers need to be connected to power and installing them could take hours to a few days,” Lee told a regular briefing. “Mobile loudspeaker operations can be conducted right away.”
Government officials declined to elaborate on when the measures that had been restricted under the 2018 pact will resume but did not rule out the possibility of conducting preemptive loudspeaker broadcasts depending on circumstances.
A government source said there appears to be no plan to immediately install the fixed loudspeakers as such activities could heighten military tension, noting that the military will likely operate the mobile equipment first if such broadcasts are resumed.
A unification ministry official said the South still remains open to dialogue with the North, noting that Pyongyang continues to walk the path of isolation after severing inter-Korean communication lines in April last year.
“North Korea should not take
actions of self-isolation through such provocations but take the path of denuclearization and people’s livelihood,” the official said. “We will continue to make efforts so that North Korea comes to the path of dialogue.”
On Sunday, North Korea said it will temporarily stop sending balloons carrying trash across the border, though it threatened to retaliate with balloons carrying “garbage amounting to 100 times” in the event Seoul activists send more anti-Pyongyang leaflets.
A North Korean defectors’ group said Monday it could consider temporarily halting the scattering of such leaflets across the border if the North’s leader Kim Jong-un apologizes for the sending of trash-carrying balloons to South Korea.
Source: Yonhap News Agency