hankyoreh

On October 11, President Roh Moo-hyun said that the Northern Limit Line is not a territorial demarcation and the remark is causing outcry from the conservative Grand National Party. This controversy centers on differences in understanding of the NLL’s “modern meaning.” Experts caution against “politicizing” the issue, pointing out that it is better to review the legal and historical meaning of the line, including the agreements reached between the two Koreas in 1992, and put greater focus on how to seek co-existence on the peninsula.

The NLL was created immediately after the signing of the armistice treaty, which halted the 1950-53 Korean War. On August 30, 1953, the line was drawn unilaterally by the United Nations Command in order to prevent the South from attacking the North with its weak naval forces. At the time, the UNC did not officially notify the North that it was drawing the line, since it thought that the move was just part of its rule of military operations.

Professor Lee Jang-hee of Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, an international law expert, said, “The NLL is literally the limit line, not a demarcation line on which the two Koreas agreed.”

The legal interpretation is more apparent when the line is compared with others drawn on land, over sea areas near five western islands and the river mouth of the Han, according to Chung Tae-wook, a law professor at Inha University. In the case of the land demarcation, the armistice treaty specifies where the line and demilitarized zone are located.

However, as for the sea areas off the western coast, there is no mention over who will have direct jurisdiction, though the treaty says that five islands in the area should be subject to the ruling of the UNC. For the Han River’s estuary, the treaty said that it can be open for the passage of civilian ships from both sides, but noted that jurisdiction can be invoked only when it is needed to determine regulations regarding ship passage. This is the ground on which the argument that the NLL is not a valid demarcation is based, from the perspective of international law.

Prof. Chung said, “The armistice treaty doesn’t divide the sea area but prevents them from blocking one another, and guarantees that both sides can use it.”

North Korea has intensified its efforts to neutralize the line since the 1970s. Between October and November of 1973, North Korean ships intentionally crossed over the line 43 times. On July 1, 1977, it designated a so-called 200-nautical mile economic sea zone and one month later it declared the area a maritime military demarcation line. Against this backdrop, the two Koreas agreed in a 1992 deal that both sides will continue talks on a maritime line of non-aggression while continuing to control the areas that they have been under their control until an official maritime line is drawn.

Despite such an agreement, the western sea area has been a place of confrontation between the two Koreas, with two clashes taking place in 1999 and 2002. All this is due to a conflicting understanding of what both sides have so far controlled. The South says that its jurisdiction reaches up to the southern part of the NLL, an argument with which the North does not agree.

The South Korean government basically thinks that the NLL is a “valid maritime demarcation line.” Different opinions, however, are often cast from the Defense and Unification Ministries over the wording in the 1992 agreement that both sides will “continue talks,” though the former has not made outright remarks that the NLL is a maritime borderline. Since May last year, when the two Koreas held military talks, the North has stayed away from making a unilateral declaration on the line, putting more focus on the need to continue negotiations on the issue.

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