South Korea has proposed a military talk with North Korea, aimed at defusing the risk of border conflict

On November 17 local time, the South Korean Ministry of National Defense officially proposed to North Korea to hold a military talk, with the core issue being to clarify the baseline of the military demarcation in the border demilitarized zone, in order to prevent accidental armed conflicts and ease the increasingly tense border situation. This is the first time that the Lee government has put forward proposal for talks with North Korea since it came to power.

Kim Hong-cheol, head of the defense policy room at the Ministry of National Defense of South Korea, that in recent days, the North Korean military has carried out activities such as road construction, wire setting, and landmine burying near the military demarcation line, and there been many cases of personnel crossing the border. The South Korean side has warned and driven away the relevant personnel through radio warnings and shooting, and the risk of friction between the two sides continued to rise. The root cause lies in the fact that many boundary markers set by the 1953 “Korean Armistice Agreement” have been lost, and are differences in the recognition of the boundary line in some areas between the two sides.

It is reported that all military communication lines between South Korea and North Korea have been completely off. The South Korean side has proposed to convey the message through the “United Nations Command – North Korean Army” channel. The specific time and place of the meeting can be through consultation at Panmunjom.