South Korea has said it intends to restore an agreement suspending military activity along its border with North Korea and revive inter-Korean cooperation, as President Lee Jae-myung attempts to dampen soaring tensions over Pyongyang’s nuclear programme and deepening ties with Russia.
Marking the 80th anniversary of Korea’s liberation from Japanese colonial rule on Friday, Lee said he will seek to restore the so-called September 19 Military Agreement and rebuild trust with North Korea.
“To prevent accidental clashes between South and North Korea and to build military trust, we will take proactive, gradual steps to restore the [2018] September 19 Military Agreement,” Lee said in a televised speech.
Lee added that his government “will not pursue any form of unification by absorption and has no intention of engaging in hostile acts” against its northern neighbour.
The September 19 agreement was signed at an inter-Korean summit in 2018, where the leaders of both countries declared the start of a new era of peace.
But Seoul partially suspended the deal in late 2023 after it objected to North Korea launching a military spy satellite into space, with Pyongyang then effectively ripping up the deal as it deployed heavy weapons into the Demilitarized Zone between both countries and restored guard posts.
Tensions then spiralled between the two Koreas under Yoon Suk-yeol, South Korea’s conservative ex-president who was elected in 2022 but removed from office in April and is now serving jail time for his brief imposition of martial law in December.
South Korea and North Korea – separated along the heavily militarised buffer zone known as the 38th parallel – are still technically at war after their 1950-53 war ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty.
Making clear his desire to resume dialogue with Pyongyang since winning a snap election in June, South Korea’s new left-leaning President Lee has taken a softer tone and sought rapprochement with North Korea.
Soon after his inauguration and in his government’s first concrete step towards easing tensions, Lee halted the South blasting propaganda messages and K-pop songs across the border into the North.
Earlier this month, South Korea began removing its loudspeakers from its side of the border, while Seoul’s Joint Chiefs of Staff claimed it had evidence that Pyongyang was doing the same.
But, on Thursday, Kim Yo Jong – the powerful sister of North Korea’s long-ruling leader Kim Jong Un – dampened any suggestion of warming ties between the Koreas.
Kim, who oversees the propaganda operations of the Workers’ Party of Korea, which has ruled the country since 1948, accused Seoul of misleading the public and “building up the public opinion while embellishing their new policy” towards Pyongyang.
“We have never removed loudspeakers installed on the border area and are not willing to remove them,” Kim said.
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