North and South Korea have reportedly reached an agreement to cut down on guard posts and firearms along the border between the two countries.
The agreement, which stemmed from a second round of tri-lateral talks between Pyongyang, Seoul and the UN Command (UNC), will see 11 guard posts removed from inside a one-kilometre radius of the Military Demarcation Line.
All firearms will also be removed from the so-called “truce village” of Panmunjom, which straddles the demilitarised zone (DMZ), in a sign of warming relations between the two Koreas.
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Each country will also cut numbers of personnel stationed at the Joint Security Area (JSA) at Panmunjom to 35 by Thursday, with a two-day joint inspection by all sides to follow.
Earlier this month, the two Koreas began the removal of landmines at the JSA, in an operation that took 20 days but only removed a fraction of the landmines known to have been planted in the DMZ since the Korean War.
US general Vincent Brooks, the current commander of US forces in South Korea, said he “supported initiatives that could reduce military tensions”, The Guardian reports, although he highlighted a “reasonable degree of risk” in Seoul’s plans to dismantle guard posts near the DMZ.
Reuters reports that the US has “concerns that the inter-Korean military initiative could undermine defence readiness”, noting that the announcement “comes without substantial progress on North Korea’s promised denuclearisation”.
The “divergence in methods” between Seoul and Washington D.C when it comes to dealing with Pyongyang “has already sparked some tension between the allies and analysts fear more is to come”, says the Financial Times.
