The defense ministry plans to reorganize its North Korea policy office to focus on sanctions strategies against Pyongyang while reducing tasks related to inter-Korean military engagement, officials said Thursday.
Under the plan, the ministry’s North Korea policy division will be renamed the North Korea strategy division, which will be tasked with coming up with strategies on Seoul’s sanctions against Pyongyang, according to the officials.
South Korea has recently focused on imposing unilateral sanctions against the North over its continued push to advance its weapons programs amid discord in the U.N. Security Council, primarily from Russia, over strengthening anti-Pyongyang sanctions.
A ministry official said the organizational change is designed to help with efforts to “preemptively and actively” respond to North Korea’s advancing nuclear and missile threats and various provocations and threats.
The newly organized division will also no longer focus on maintaining military agreements with North Korea, an
d significantly reduce tasks related to inter-Korean military talks.
The two Koreas last held general-level military talks at the border village of Panmunjom in 2018.
Last month, Seoul fully suspended an inter-Korean tension-reduction pact in response to the North’s recent trash-carrying balloon launches and attempts to jam GPS signals around the South’s northwestern border islands.
The deal, signed in 2018, had set up land and maritime buffer zones, as well as no-fly zones around the border to reduce tensions and prevent accidental clashes.
The organizational shake-up comes as inter-Korean ties have become increasingly strained, with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un calling for revising his country’s constitution to define South Korea as its “invariable principal enemy.”
Source: Yonhap News Agency
