Seoul: South Korea’s Defence Minister Ahn Gyu-back and US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth visited the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) separating the two Koreas on Monday, as the allies seek to resume diplomacy with North Korea while ensuring a robust combined defence posture.
The defence chiefs visited Observation Post Ouellette, the UN Command’s military facility close to the Military Demarcation Line, and the Joint Security Area (JSA) inside the DMZ, marking the first joint visit to the buffer zone by the two countries’ defence chiefs since October 2017.
The 250-kilometre-long, four-km-wide DMZ is a buffer zone between the two Koreas, which remain technically at war as the 1950-53 Korean War ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty.
It remains unknown if Hegseth had a message for North Korea at the DMZ, Yonhap news agency reported. Observers said that the Secretary might have a message of peace on the divided Korean Peninsula rather than of warning against Pyongyang given that Seoul and Washington seek to create an opening to kick-start diplomacy with the recalcitrant regime.
Following the visit, Seoul’s defence chief Ahn told reporters that Hegseth appeared to be impressed by a combined search operation by South Korean and US troops at the DMZ and expressed satisfaction over the allies’ combined defence posture.
Ahn noted that Hegseth mentioned the visit by the allies’ defence chiefs to the JSA carries a “symbolic” meaning for their alliance, given how it is a site at the front line of inter-Korean ties as well as a venue of US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s meeting.
The defence minister also mentioned how Hegseth remarked he learned through the visit how close the South Korean Daeseongdong Freedom Village is to the North.
The visit to the DMZ came about an hour after Hegseth landed at Osan Air Base in Pyeongtaek, some 65 km south of Seoul, kicking off his two-day visit to Korea.
On Tuesday, Ahn and Hegseth will attend the allies’ annual defence talks, called the Security Consultative Meeting (SCM).
During the SCM, the two sides are expected to discuss an array of key alliance issues, including the transfer of wartime operational control (OPCON) from Washington to Seoul, South Korea’s defense spending and the alliance’s combined defense posture, to name a few.
The issue of the OPCON transition is likely to figure prominently at the SCM as South Korean President Lee Jae Myung’s administration seeks to retake wartime OPCON within its five-year term that ends in 2030.
Seoul’s push for the transfer comes as the South Korean military has stepped up efforts to advance its independent defense capabilities, with Washington calling on Seoul to undertake greater security responsibilities.
The two countries have been working on the conditions-based OPCON transition. South Korea handed over operational control over its troops during the 1950-53 Korean War. It retook peacetime OPCON in 1994, but wartime OPCON still remains in US hands.
Also on Tuesday, Hegseth plans to meet with President Lee Jae Myung, and meet US troops at Camp Humphreys in Pyeongtaek, the largest US overseas military installation, to thank them and their families.
Korea is the last leg of Hegseth’s Asia swing that included stops in Hawaii, Japan, Malaysia and Vietnam.
(IANS)
