hankyoreh

2008.

The South Korean government suggested the United Nations Command ignore a proposition made by North Korea on Feb. 28 that there be top military talks between the North and the UN Command, but the United States said yes to the same meeting that eventually took place on March 2, saying it would be better to actually meet and talk.

According to a source knowledgeable about the U.S.-South Korean relationship, the talks between the North and the UN Command of March 2 happened only because the United States said it would meet with the Northerners in its capacity as part of the UN Command after Seoul said it wanted to ignore the North’s proposal and not have a meeting.

“The different judgments and responses by Seoul and Washington show you there are no small differences between the two countries about how they view the recent political situation on the Korean Peninsula and their strategies for dealing with the North,” the source said. The reason the UN Command met with the North on March 2 without first having revealed the North had proposed the closed meeting appears to have been because South Korean and American authorities needed time to reconcile their positions.

A South Korean Ministry of National Defense official, however, insisted that “our government was positive about the talks from the very start” and that there “weren’t any points of discord or differences of opinion between us and the Americans.”

While the Seoul government has said close to nothing about the talks, the UN Command and American officials are calling the meeting “useful,” with a U.S. State Department spokesperson saying the United States welcomes such talks since they “prevent misunderstanding.”

The meeting March 2 was a “general-level” military talk, the first of its kind in roughly six and a half years. A “colonel-level” meeting is scheduled on March 5 and a “general-level” meting on March 6. Both meetings will take place in Panmunjom.

The North proposed the March 2 meeting on Feb. 28, when it sent a prepared telephone statement in the name of an “official responsible for working-level military affairs” in “North-South Management Sector of the West and East Sea Zone.” The statement criticized what it called “American military provocations in the North-South Management Sector” (nambuk gwalli guyeok) and called for the end to U.S.-South Korean military exercises scheduled for March 9-20.

Please direct questions or comments to [englishhani@hani.co.kr]