South Korea offers talks with North to prevent accidental armed clash at
border
[November 17, 2025]
By HYUNG-JIN KIM
SEOUL,
South Korea (AP) — South Korea proposed talks with North Korea to
clarify the rivals' border line and ease military tensions, saying
Monday that North Korean soldiers' repeated border intrusions have
raised worries about an armed clash. |
A North Korean military guard post, top, and a South Korean post,
bottom, are seen from Paju, South Korea, near the border with North
Korea, on June 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon, File) |
|
South Korea's military says it has been firing warning shots to
repel North Korean troops who violated the border's military
demarcation line numerous times since they began engaging in
work to boost front-line defenses last year. North Korea has
denied that and threatened unspecified responses, saying its
soldiers worked within the North's territory.
Kim Hong-Cheol, South Korean deputy minister for national
defense policy, said Monday that South Korea was offering
military talks to prevent an accidental armed clash and lower
tensions with North Korea.
Kim said that the North's border intrusions were likely caused
by the rivals' different views on the border line, because many
of the military demarcation line posts established at the end of
the 1950-53 Korean War have been lost.
It's unclear if North Korea would accept South Korea's calls for
talks, because it's been shunning all forms of dialogue with
South Korea and the U.S. since its leader Kim Jong Un's
high-stakes nuclear diplomacy with U.S. President Donald Trump
fell apart in 2019. Some observers say South Korea's offer for
talks was part of efforts by its liberal government led by
President Lee Jae Myung to reopen communication channels with
North Korea.
Last year, Kim declared that North Korea was abandoning its
long-standing goals of a peaceful unification between the Koreas
and ordered the rewriting of the North’s constitution to mark
the South as a permanent enemy. South Korea's military said that
it has since detected North Korea adding anti-tank barriers and
planting more mines at border areas.
The Koreas' 248-kilometer-long (155-mile-long),
four-kilometer-wide (2½-mile-wide) border is one of the world’s
most heavily armed frontiers. An estimated 2 million mines are
peppered inside and near the border, which is also guarded by
barbed-wire fences, tank traps and combat troops on both sides.
It’s a legacy of the Korean War, which ended with an armistice,
not a peace treaty.
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