US President Barack Obama stared across the demilitarised zone into North Korea today from an observation post on the southern side of the border as world leaders began gathering in Seoul for a nuclear security summit.
Obama flew the 40 kilometres (25 miles) from the South Korean capital to the border by helicopter and touched down just outside the DMZ at Camp Bonifas, where he met US and local commanders and troops. It was his first visit to the area.
The president will meet his South Korean counterpart President Lee Myung Bak later today at the presidential Blue House, where they will hold a news conference after the two nations’ free-trade pact came into effect this month and as their militaries continue war games aimed at deterring any aggression from the regime in Pyongyang. Meetings will follow over the next two days with the leaders of China and Russia as Obama seeks to increase pressure on Iran and North Korea.
“The contrast between South Korea and North Korea could not be clearer,” Obama said at Camp Bonifas. “Both in terms of freedom but also in terms of prosperity.”
There are 28,500 US forces in South Korea, facing off against a North Korean military that has placed 70 per cent of its ground forces within 90 kilometres of the DMZ, including about 250 long-range artillery systems capable of striking the Seoul area, according to US Forces Korea.
Obama’s visit to the DMZ comes a day before the second anniversary of the March 26, 2010, sinking of the Cheonan. The South Korean naval vessel sank, killing 46 sailors, after an explosion that an international investigation blamed on North Korea. Four more South Koreans died later that year when North Korea shelled an island along their disputed western sea border.
Observation post
The president stopped for about 10 minutes at Observation Post Ouellette, within 100 yards (90 metres) of the demarcation line that was drawn at the end of the Korean War in 1953. US and South Korean troops make foot patrols from the post, which has four guard towers and underground bunkers.
Obama gazed through binoculars into North Korea, where guard posts, the industrial complex at Gaeseong and sparsely vegetated hillsides and fields are visible from Ouellette. South Korean manufacturers employ North Korean workers at the Gaeseong complex, which has kept running even as political tensions rise.
A North Korean flag flew at half mast in the distance as the totalitarian regime today marked 100 days since the death of Kim Jong Il. His is son and successor, Kim Jong Un, is preparing for a rocket launch next month that’s been condemned by the US, South Korea and Japan. The North denies the launch is a missile test and says the rocket will carry a satellite into orbit.
‘Smear campaign’
North Korea is not a participant in the two-day Nuclear Security Summit that begins tomorrow in Seoul, where world leaders are coming together to announce their commitments to keep nuclear and fissile material out of terrorists’ hands.
North Korea described the Nuclear Security Summit as a platform for an “international smear campaign” against it, according to a statement on March 23 carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.
Danny Russel, senior director for Asia policy at the White House National Security Council, said North Korea is the “odd man out” and that Seoul hosting the summit highlights the prosperity and international engagement that the poor and isolated country could enjoy if the regime changed its approach. “One would hope that North Korea’s leaders would recognise the choice they have before them,” he said.
Trade partners
South Korea was the US’s seventh-largest goods trading partner, with $88 billion in total goods trade for 2010, according to the Office of the US Trade Representative.
The free-trade agreement between the two nations is the biggest for the US in almost two decades. It will cut about 80 per cent of tariffs between them and may increase US exports as much as $10.9 billion in the first year it’s in full effect, according to the US International Trade Commission.
This is Obama’s third visit to South Korea since taking office in 2009. Previous US presidents to visit the DMZ were Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and George W Bush.
Obama will signal to North Korea that “there is a path” for the regime to have “a better relationship with the international community,” Ben Rhodes, Obama’s deputy national security adviser for strategic communications, said on March 20.
The US is using sanctions among measures to ratchet up economic pressure on Iran’s leaders in an effort to persuade them to abandon any illicit part of their nuclear programme.
Iran sanctions
The US, Europe and Israel have accused Iran of seeking the capability to build a nuclear weapon. Iran says its program is for civilian energy and medical research.
North Korea’s announcement of a mid-April rocket launch may scuttle a February 29 US aid deal and broader efforts to get the regime back to negotiations on its nuclear weapons programme.
It had agreed to halt nuclear and missile tests and the US was to begin providing 240,000 tonnes of food aid.
The planned rocket launch is “an issue quite different” from the February 29 agreement and North Korea “remains unchanged in its stand to sincerely implement” the moratorium, an unidentified spokesman for the North Korean Foreign Ministry said in a statement on KCNA on March 23.
North Korea will “inevitably” be compelled to take countermeasures against “any sinister attempt” to hinder its planned rocket launch, the spokesman said.
