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SKOREA-NKOREA-POLITICS-DIPLOMACY,CHRONO
Seven decades of tensions between the two Koreas
SEOUL, Jan 9, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – North and South Korea held their first
talks for two years Tuesday, stirring hopes of a tentative rapprochement
between the bitterly divided neighbours.
Tensions soared last year as the North made rapid progress on its banned
nuclear weapons programmes, while US President Donald Trump engaged in an
increasingly bellicose verbal scrap with Pyongyang’s leader Kim Jong-Un.
Here are some key moments in the decades-long standoff between the two
Koreas:
– War but no peace –
In June 1950 fighting broke out between the communist North and capitalist
South, sparking a brutal war that killed between two and four million people.
Beijing backed Pyongyang in the three-year conflict, while Washington threw
its support behind the South — alliances that have largely endured. The
Koreas have been locked in a dangerous dance ever since that conflict ended
in 1953 with an armistice rather than a formal peace treaty, leaving them
technically at war.
– Sending in the assassins – Pyongyang has tested the fragile ceasefire
with numerous attacks.
The secretive nation sent a team of 31 commandos to Seoul in a botched
attempt to assassinate then-President Park Chung-Hee in 1968. All but two
were killed.
In the “axe murder incident” of 1976, North Korean soldiers attacked a work
party trying to chop down a tree inside the Demilitarized Zone, leaving two
US army officers dead.
Pyongyang launched perhaps its most audacious assassination attempt in
Myanmar in 1983, when a bomb exploded in a Yangon mausoleum during a visit by
South Korean President Chun Doo-hwan. He survived but 21 people, including
some government ministers, were killed.
In 1987 a bomb on a Korean Air flight exploded over the Andaman Sea,
killing all 115 people on board. Seoul accused Pyongyang, which denied
involvement.
– Direct confrontation –
The North’s founding leader Kim Il-Sung died in 1994, but under his son Kim
Jong-Il it continued to prod its southern neighbour.
In 1996 a North Korean submarine on a spying mission ran aground off the
eastern South Korean port of Gangneung, sparking 45-day manhunt that ended
with 24 crew members and infiltrators killed.
A clash between South Korean and North Korean naval ships in 1999 left some
50 of the North’s soldiers dead.
In March 2010 Seoul accused Pyongyang of torpedoing one of its corvette
warships, killing 46 sailors. Pyongyang denied the charge.
November that year saw North Korea launch its first attack on a civilian-
populated area since the war, firing 170 artillery shells at Yeonpyeong. Four
people were killed, including two civilians.
– Going nuclear –
North Korea has steadfastly pursued its banned nuclear and ballistic
missile programmes since its first successful test of an atomic bomb in 2006,
as it looks to build a rocket capable of delivering a warhead to the US
mainland.
Its progress has accelerated under leader Kim Jong-Un, culminating in its
sixth and biggest nuclear test in September 2017.
Kim has since declared the country a nuclear power.
– Lines open –
Despite the caustic effect of clashes and the battery of conventional
weapons that the North has amassed at the border to threaten Seoul, the two
nations have held talks in the past.
Then North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il held two historic summits with
counterparts from the South in 2000 and 2007, which eased tensions between
the neighbours.
Lower-level talks since then have been much hyped but failed to produce
significant results.
Next month’s Winter Olympics in the South have given the neighbours a
pretext to reopen communications after a two-year hiatus.
A special cross-border hotline buzzed into life for the first time since
2016 last week, in response to a suggestion by Kim Jong-Un that Pyongyang
could send a team to the Games, which the South has billed as its “Peace
Olympics”.
BSS/AFP/ARS/0949 hrs