S.Korea urges N.Korea to drop hostile tactics

N.Korean soldier probed after crossing border
Seoul (AFP) March 3, 2010 - A North Korean soldier was being questioned Wednesday after crossing into South Korea across the heavily fortified land border, Seoul's spy agency said. The National Intelligence Service said it was mounting a joint investigation with the military and the police but would not confirm the soldier intended to defect. Yonhap news agency, citing a government source, said earlier the soldier crossed into the eastern province of Gangwon late Tuesday and expressed a desire to live in the South. The spy agency refused to identify the soldier or give details of the crossing. Defections across the inter-Korean frontier, which is surrounded by barbed wire and minefields in most places, are rare. Incidents of North Korean soldiers crossing were reported in 2002, and in April and October 2008. Almost all civilians fleeing the North go first to China, and travel on to third countries before winning resettlement in the South. About 18,000 have arrived in the South since the 1950-1953 war.

by Staff Writers
Seoul (AFP) March 3, 2010
South Korea's point man on North Korea Wednesday urged the communist state to drop its hard-line tactics, saying they would only undermine ties.

"North Korea's hard-lined measures can no longer serve as (viable) strategies or tactics," Unification Minister Hyun In-Taek told an annual meeting of government officials and advocates of unification with the North.

"Confrontation and discord will benefit neither the North nor the South," he said, adding South Korea would patiently expand cooperation with North Korea.

The two sides must open sincere dialogue to discuss all pending issues, including the North's nuclear programme, "with open hearts," he said, quoted by Yonhap news agency.

Diplomatic efforts are intensifying to revive six-nation nuclear disarmament negotiations which the North abandoned last April, a month before it staged a second nuclear test.

Before it returns to dialogue, the North is calling for UN sanctions to be lifted. It also wants a US commitment to discuss a peace pact to replace the armistice which ended the 1950-1953 Korean War.

The North warned Tuesday that South Korean-US war games this month would torpedo efforts to rid the peninsula of nuclear weapons, and vowed to strengthen its atomic arsenal if necessary.

The North's military last week accused South Korean and US troops of planning a surprise attack under the pretext of the exercise and warned it could respond with atomic weapons.

The North has also announced it is holding four South Koreans for illegal entry but has given no details. A South Korean activist has said they entered the North from China.

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N.Korea says war games threaten nuclear disarmament
Seoul (AFP) March 2, 2010
North Korea warned Tuesday that South Korean-US war games this month would torpedo efforts to rid the peninsula of nuclear weapons, and vowed to strengthen its atomic arsenal if necessary. Despite tensions over the exercise the two Koreas went ahead with talks on ways to ease business at their jointly-run Kaesong factory estate, a valuable revenue source for the sanctions-hit North. The ... read more

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