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South Korean official says tension remains despite warming ties with North

September 21, 2000
Web posted at: 12:45 PM HKT (0445 GMT)

SEOUL, South Korea (Reuters) -- Despite rapidly warming ties between North and South Korea, little progress has been made in reducing military tensions between the erstwhile enemies, South Korean Defence Minister Cho Seong-tae said on Thursday.

Speaking to U.S. Defence Secretary William Cohen and top military officials at an annual security conference with its key ally, Cho said the talks were "highly significant" coming three months after June's landmark North-South summit in Pyongyang.

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Since the summit, the two Koreas have stopped their barrage of propaganda broadcasts and taken steps to promote economic and social exchanges, including meetings between families separated for decades by the world's most-fortified border.

"However, despite the changes, there has been little real progress in dismantling the military tensions between the two Koreas, as North Korea's military threat remains the same," he said.

Cho, however, will be meeting his North Korean counterpart on a South Korean resort island on Monday and Tuesday in what would be the first meeting of defence ministers from the two Koreas since the 1950-53 Korean War, which has not officially ended.

The annual security meeting with the United States, which maintains 37,000 troops in South Korea, comes at a time of rising sentiment against the troops in the wake of the summit and questions about the future of the U.S. military presence.

Cho alluded to that in his opening statement at the meeting.

"(The meeting) provides us with an opportunity to re-examine the overall pending issues of the security situation on the Korean peninsula and the chance to discuss the future of the (South Korean)-U.S. alliance."

After meeting President Kim Dae-jung on Wednesday, Cohen said Seoul remained strongly committed to the alliance.

"He (Kim) was very clear on the need for the United States to maintain its presence on the Korean peninsula," the secretary told reporters after nearly an hour of talks with the South Korean leader.

Cohen said the president also stressed again that North Korean leader Kim Jong il agreed at their recent historic North-South summit that U.S. troops should remain in Korea as a stabilising presence in Asia.

"We are encouraged by some of the activities that have taken place with the South-North summit. There seems to be a warming of relations," Cohen told reporters travelling with him on an Asia-Pacific trip to six countries.

"We support President Kim's efforts to bring about a more peaceful environment and ultimately a reconciliation."

"But we must remain militarily strong and we must remain completely united and continue to coordinate in every way that we can," he said of the annual U.S.-South Korean security talks.

President Kim feels, Cohen said, that if the 37,000 U.S. troops pulled out of South Korea, "the balance of power would shift in the region," leaving instability and a power vacuum that others might seek to fill.

But while repeatedly cautioning that the U.S.-South Korean military alliance must be prepared for any surprise from Pyongyang, U.S. and South Korean officials are watching with anticipation as North and South Korea take concrete steps toward better ties after the summit.

"This is obviously a time of great change and potentially, I think, a time of what I would describe as fundamental transformation...on the peninsula," a senior U.S. official told reporters ahead of the Kim-Cohen meeting.

Increased nationalism among many South Koreans, sparked by warming ties with the North, has put some pressure on the alliance between the United States and South Korea.

But Cohen told reporters that a "flare-up of anti-American sentiment" here after the summit was now virtually over and that the two allies were getting closer to settling contentious issues involving the legal status of U.S. troops in the South and changes in the allowable range of South Korean missiles.

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