[USFK Forums] North Korea Demands Redrawn Border [AP]

[C. Y. Lee]

Uploaded by C. Y. Lee on Saturday, March 4, 2006

North Korea Demands Redrawn Border

By BO-MI LIM, Associated Press Writer
Fri Mar 3, 12:38 AM ET

SEOUL (AP) - Military officials from North and South Korea were at odds Friday over the North's demand that they redraw their western sea border, as they met for a second day of high-level talks — the first such dialogue in nearly two years.

During the talks that opened Thursday, South Korea proposed ways to prevent skirmishes between naval and fishing boats along the poorly marked maritime border.

The navies of the two Koreas fought deadly battles in the western sea in 1999 and 2002, while fishing boats from the two sides routinely jostle for position during the May-June crab-catching season.

South Korea suggested setting up joint fishing zones and other measures to ease the tension. However, North Korea demanded that the issue be handled "fundamentally" by redrawing the western sea border, according to pool reports. The North doesn't recognize the border demarcated by the United Nations at the end of the 1950-53 Korean War.

"The North and the South should solve the issue of the waters of the West Sea on the principle of ... declaring a new West Sea territorial waters limit internally and externally," the North's chief delegate, Lt. Gen. Kim Yong Chol, said during the talks, according to the North's official Korean Central News Agency.

South Korean delegation spokesman, Col. Moon Sung-mook, said South Korea is "of a position that we should first deal with issues that we can," according to pool reports.

Two-star generals from the rival Koreas are leading two days of talks at the border truce village of Panmunjeom inside the Demilitarized Zone. The meeting is the third of its kind and the first since June 2004.

Technically the two Koreas remain at war because the Korean War ended in a cease-fire, not a peace treaty. However, relations have improved significantly since their leaders met for the first time in 2000.

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