South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol said Wednesday he would consider suspending an inter-Korean military deal reached in 2018 if North Korea “violates” South Korean territory again.
Mr Yoon on Wednesday urged his security advisers to “consider suspending the September 19 military deal if North Korea commits further provocations by violating our territory,” South Korean President Kim Eun-hye’s spokeswoman told the press.
The agreement, reached at a 2018 summit in Pyongyang, aimed to ease military tensions along the highly secure inner-Korean border by creating maritime “buffer zones”.
At the time, the two sides agreed to halt “various military exercises targeting the other side along the military demarcation line” separating the two Koreas, but Pyongyang has repeatedly violated the agreement over the past year.
Mr. Yoon also called for “large-scale production of small drones, which are difficult to detect, by the end of the year” and the creation of a multipurpose drone unit to arm his country with a “capacity-overwhelming counterforce”. offensive.
Withdrawal of the 2018 deal “would increase the risk of heightened military tensions and actual confrontation in the border areas,” Hong Min of the Korea Institute for National Unification told AFP that the deal would still help “prevent a major military confrontation.” .
“The story will be very different when Yoon ends the deal politically and officially,” he added.
In 2022, North Korea conducted several artillery barrages in the maritime “buffer zones” created by the said agreement.
Last week, North Korea flew five drones over the inter-Korean border and entered Seoul airspace.
These violations have prompted South Korean lawmakers from the ruling party to multiply calls for the 2018 deal to be scrapped.
After the North Korean drone strike, the first such incident in five years, the South Korean defense minister apologized after the South Korean military failed to shoot down a single drone despite warning shots and the use of fighter jets.