Until an agreement yesterday, North and South Korea stood on the brink of war for the last several days. As usual, each accused the other of precipitating the crisis. As a deadline approached at 5 PM Saturday, high level negotiators from both countries gathered at Panmunjom and after marathon talks, found a way to back down. As we hear from Neal Conan in today's Pacific News Minute… this was just the latest in a long series of confrontations.
Maybe the single worst moment occurred in the city still known in October, 1983 as Rangoon. A bomb exploded in the ceiling of a building where a large South Korean delegation awaited the arrival of President Chun Doo Hwan. 3 senior officials were among 17 South Koreans killed. 4 Burmese also died. President Chun only escaped because his car was held up in traffic. Two of the culprits were captured, one confessed to being a North Korean military officer.
In this same period, North Korea abducted hundreds of people from South Korea, Japan, China, France and other countries, most notoriously a South Korean film star and her ex-husband director who were forced to make movies in North Korea, including a remake of Godzilla.
Two naval battles punctuated a generally more peaceful period that also included two summit meetings and an agreement on reconciliation and non-aggression. Then in March 2010, a South Korean naval vessel was sunk by what an international panel determined to be a North Korean torpedo. 46 crewmen died and South Korea cut off all trade while North Korea abrogated the non-aggression pact. That same year, 4 South Koreans died in an artillery attack on an island in disputed waters.
It remains to be seen if this week's agreement signifies a real change in relations that have been very poor these last few years, undermined in no small part by North Korea's repeated threats to use nuclear weapons.