hankyoreh

South Chungcheong Province

The General Staff of the North Korean People’s Army announced Thursday that it plans to nullify the bilateral agreement signed with South Korea to prevent accidental clashes from occurring in the waters of the West Sea. It also said that it would discontinue all use of very high frequency (VHF) wireless communication equipment in international waters, and immediately sever communication channels opened to deal with emergency circumstances.

At the second inter-Korean general-level military talks on June 4, 2004, North Korea and South Korea made an agreement over plans to prevent accidental clashes in the West Sea, including a bilateral halt to psychological warfare, use of the international merchant maritime vessel wireless network, and the establishment of three military communication lines in the West Sea area.

Since Thursday’s announcement of the invalidation of “agreements to prevent accidental clashes” directly follows South Korea’s recent resumption of psychological warfare against North Korea, the June 4 agreement has been effectively dismantled. Based on this agreement, South Korean patrol ships had been using international frequencies (156.8MHz and 156.6MHz) to send warning communications to North Korean patrol ships traveling south of the Northern Limit Line (NLL).

“With regard to North Korean-South Korean cooperation and interchange, we are retracting all military safeguards that our armed forces were to observe,” the General Staff said in their announcement. “We will also begin examining shutting down military communication contact sites and the fully cutting off land passage in connection with the Kaesong Industrial Complex and other sites.”

Analysts have interpreted this to mean that while North Korea may not immediately sever the six military communication lines for land passage in the East and West Sea areas or block transit, it does intend to observe South Korea’s use of psychological warfare in the future and make a determination about whether to take measures.

On the same day, the South Korean navy held its first sea exercises since the Cheonan’s sinking. The maneuvers in the West Sea involved around ten warships, including three corvettes affiliated with the Second Fleet, six high-speed vessels, and one 3,500 ton-class Korean-model destroyer. The exercises, which are taking place through Friday in the waters of the Gyeongnyeolbi Islands to the west of the Taean Peninsula in South Chungcheong Province, include scenarios such as a corvette detecting an enemy submersible and attacking it with a depth charge, as well as the use of 76mm guns to fire at a North Korean patrol boat that has crossed the NLL. These scenarios are an indication that the exercises were intended as a show of force to North Korea in connection with the Cheonan incident.

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