South Korea rethinks line drawn in sea with North
SOUTH KOREA: Fresh from a summit designed to bring the two
Koreas closer, South Korea’s president has touched off a furious debate
about the line that divides them.
President Roh Moo-hyun was upbraided by former generals, lawmakers
and the media for questioning last week whether a naval border drawn at
the end of the 1950-1953 Korean War counted as a legal boundary between
the two states, technically still at war.
The border off the west coast called the Northern Limit Line has gone
from being a contested zone for crab fisherman into a region of deadly
conflict.
It was set unilaterally by U.N.-led forces at the end of the Korean
War and recognised since then by the South’s military as the de facto
border. Pyongyang declared the line invalid in 1999.
“The NLL was originally drawn as the operational limit line for our
military. So, even though some people now call it a territorial line,
that is misleading,” Roh told reporters on Thursday.
Seoul, Sunday, Reuters |