North Korea puts exchange
of transportation agreement on hold

By Jim Lea
Osan bureau chief

Pyongyang, apparently still piqued over being named South Korea’s "main enemy" in a Defense White Paper, has told Seoul it will delay the exchange of an agreement on construction of rail and highway links between the two Koreas.

Yoon Il-young, a spokesman for the Defense Ministry in Seoul, said notification of the delay was received Sunday. The ministry had proposed the agreement be exchanged this week at the truce village of Panmunjom.

The North cited "administrative reasons" for the delay and did not propose a new date for the exchange, Yoon said.

The two sides have spent months working on ground rules for the effort to restore the rail link and build a four-lane highway through the Demilitarized Zone.

Agreement was reached last week on those ground rules, which are aimed at maintaining security and preventing military clashes during construction.

The South had wanted the document to be signed at a meeting between defense ministers of the two countries. However, the North proposed that the agreement become effective immediately, and the South agreed.

As Thursday’s meeting ended, the North demanded that the term "main enemy" used in the 2000 Defense White Paper issued by the South’s Defense Ministry late last year be deleted.

North Korean delegates to the meeting said Pyongyang’s defense minister, Kim Il Chul, was angered by the phrase and there would be no more defense minister conferences until the phase is deleted. The defense ministers held their fist meeting in September but have not met since.

A National Assembly committee on Monday questioned Defense Minister Cho on use of the phrase "main enemy." In TV reports of the committee session aired Monday night, Cho said the North "is a clear and present military threat (to the South) and has given no evidence that it has revised its strategy of communizing the peninsula."

He said the phrase will not be deleted until the North takes concrete steps to reduce military tension between the two countries.

The Pentagon and U.S. military commanders in South Korea say the North is a significant threat because it continues to expand its already massive conventional force and has not moved its forward-deployed units back from the border.

A government official in Seoul, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Monday the North’s refusal to exchange the construction agreement could be a bid to gain leverage in future defense minister talks.

If the agreement is not exchanged soon, it could delay the start of mine-clearing operations in the western end of the DMZ where the rail and highway links are to be built. Mine-clearing is tentatively set to begin in March.

South Korea says 3,000 soldiers will do the work from Munsan, about 25 miles north of Seoul, to the Military Demarcation Line in the center of the buffer zone.

North Korea has said it will use 35,000 soldiers for the work from the demarcation line to Kaesong, about 12 miles north of the DMZ.

The $95 million project is tentatively scheduled for completion in November.

Bae Gi-chul contributed to this report.