North Korean Troops Enter Demilitarized Zone Again North Says Actions Are Defensive; South Not Too Concerned Yet

For the second straight day, North Korea moved armed troops Saturday into the buffer zone with South Korea. U.S. and U.N. officials said there was no evidence of an imminent threat and North Korea described its actions as defensive.

The South Korean Defense Ministry said about 260 soldiers entered the demilitarized zone at 7 p.m. and left three hours later without incident.

American and United Nations military forces in South Korea said seven trucks carrying about 120 soldiers and an undetermined number of utility vehicles entered the area.

The troops occupied “fighting positions” they had prepared the night before and appeared to place several mortars of undetermined caliber in the area, said a statement from combined U.S. and U.N. military command in Seoul.

A spokesman for the force, Jim Coles, said it was evaluating the incursion, which violated the armistice ending the Korean War. The two sides have never signed a permanent peace treaty and are still technically at war.

It was the second time North Korea has violated the 43-year-old agreement since announcing on Thursday that it would no longer observe it.

On Friday, about 130 North Korean soldiers armed with mortars and machine guns entered the zone at 6 p.m. and stayed 2-1/2 hours before leaving, the Defense Ministry in Seoul said.

In both cases the northern soldiers entered the zone at Panmunjom, the village where the armistice was signed. It remains the site of infrequent but almost always testy talks between the former combatants.

U.S. officials in Washington and Seoul called the violation serious, but, noting that North Korea has made similar incursions in the past, said it appeared to pose no risk of renewed fighting on the divided peninsula.

Nevertheless, South Korea’s president convened an emergency meeting of his national security advisors Saturday. Afterward, President Kim Young-sam sought to reassure South Koreans, saying they should not be alarmed at North Korea’s “provocation.”

On Saturday, North Korea defended its actions as “self-defensive.”

A Minju Josun newspaper analysis said: “The countermeasure is only too legitimate now that we can no longer unilaterally observe the provisions of the Korean Armistice Agreement relating to the demilitarized zone along the military demarcation line.”

The analysis, reported by North’s official Korea Central News Agency, did not specify whether the “countermeasure” referred to the movement of armed troops or its dismissal of the armistice.