Later this month, both North and South Korea will commemorate the beginning of the Korean War in June 1950. The war, which lasted just over three years, concluded on 27 July 1953 – making this year the 60th anniversary. With my sister due to visit Seoul and the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) the day before, there’s no other time more interesting to see Panmunjom, the abandoned village stuck in no-man’s land that represents the joint security area administered by both sides.
Later this month, both North and South Korea will commemorate the beginning of the Korean War in June 1950. The war, which lasted just over three years, concluded on 27 July 1953 – making this year the 60th anniversary. With my sister due to visit Seoul and the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) the day before, there’s no other time more interesting to see Panmunjom, the abandoned village stuck in no-man’s land that represents the joint security area administered by both sides.
It is simply amazing to think that six decades on from that conflict, there is still no peace treaty in place between North and South. Only recently did delegations from both parties meet at the ‘Truce Village’ in Panmunjom for working-level talks hoping to pave the way forward for future high level, official discussions. These are the first government-level inter-Korean meetings in over two years, and are clearly designed to build mutual trust and ease some of the tensions still dominating politics on the peninsula.
The meeting came about after North Korea’s Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea (CPRK) proposed dialogue on issues like the continued closure of the Gaeseong Industrial Complex, where they originally wanted to hold the talks; the reopening of Mount Geumgang Tours, also financially lucrative to the North; and reuniting families separated by the Korean War.
South Korea will no doubt press the North on denuclearising the country, a stance supported by US President Barack Obama and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping during a recent summit in California. The South is also keen to force the North to abandon its ‘cyber wars’ which have had a crippling effect on servers and websites, especially since the turn of the year.
Meanwhile, the ruling Saenuri Party is hopeful of passing the long-pending North Korean Human Rights Bill at the National Assembly, irrespective of how the inter-Korean talks develop. Committee chairman Kim Gi-hyeon told the media that the bill and the resumption of talks are “totally separate” but this is likely to aggravate the North.
The bill, first proposed back in 2005, aims to establish state-run institutes to promote human rights in North Korea. But fears of a backlash from the North have seen opposition parties refusing to give backing to the controversial legislation.
However, last month’s high profile deportation from Laos of nine young North Korean defectors back to their homeland has reopened the debate. Analysts believe death or a life sentence in a concentration camp awaits them, and members of the Saenuri Party believe this would not have occurred had the bill been passed previously.
Republican politician Ha Tae-kyung, who previously worked for North Korean human rights, agrees. “It is well known that if people who attempt to defect from the North return there, they are severely punished and possibly even executed,” he said. “Parties should have approved the bill earlier, and then the young defectors would not have been deported.”
There is a certain feeling of déjà vu about all of this. January and February’s “escalation in tensions” has become almost a yearly episode, yet despite the best efforts of those living here to attempt to restore calm – the famous “we’ve seen it all before” line – family and friends were in constant contact from home.
“The North has told foreigners to leave…”; “The Americans are re-routing gunships from the South Pacific…”; “Tokyo has installed missile defence systems…”; “Satellite images show missiles being moved to the East Sea…”; “Washington is too far away but Guam could be hit by a missile…” – those were the worries that spread through the media. And… nothing happened. Thankfully, of course. But we never really believed anything would happen. It was never in the North’s interest to go to war. Indeed, it’s just another year in South Korea.
Andrew Farrell works as an English language teacher in Korea.
