PANMUNJOM, South Korea — U.S. Army Col. James M. Minnich stood on a wet slab of concrete near a single-story blue U.N. structure in this old village that straddles the official line marking the border of the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea.
With a cold wind whipping and a light rain falling, the colonel faced south, flanked by a half-dozen United Nations, South Korean and American soldiers. His back was turned toward the north and, as if on cue, two North Korean soldiers suddenly appeared in the distance over the colonel’s shoulder.
Ambling down the concrete steps of their own drab-gray military building, on a small hill just across the line of demarcation, the North Koreans were evidently eager to get a closer look at the flurry of activity unfolding on the South Korean side.
“No pointing at them,” said Col. Minnich, tilting his head back slightly toward the North Koreans as they moved closer and trained a handheld video camera on him.
“They for sure know who I am, and so they know that if I’m out here today, it must mean I’m hosting a pretty important group,” the colonel said as he entered a small U.N. building on the DMZ that is half in South Korea and half in North Korea. The soldiers soon came right up to the windows of the building and took more pictures and video, a few short feet from the Western visitors.
That was the scene that unfolded Tuesday evening in the DMZ, where Col. Minnich was providing a tour of the demarcation line for a group of journalists, regional researchers and former U.S. lawmakers participating in a Northeast Asia peace, security and media conference hosted in South Korea this week by The Washington Times and its sister publication, the Korean-language newspaper Segye Ilbo.
The group of peering, photographing North Korean soldiers is just one sign of the tensions on the Korean Peninsula that have been on the rise over the past several months, an unease heightened by a Pyongyang missile firing this week, several shooting incidents over the past year and Seoul’s declaration that it won’t tolerate further violent provocations like the shelling of an island and sinking of a boat a few years back.
“The tension is higher than it was perhaps a year ago,” said Col. Minnich, who explained that once-regular — albeit far from congenial — meetings between U.S. and North Korean military officials inside the conference room have become things of the past.
The meetings, he said, were abruptly halted in March 2013, a year after Kim Jong-un came to power in Pyongyang and a month after North Korea conducted its third nuclear test against the wishes of the U.N. Security Council.
U.S. officials have requested a return to the meetings “many times” in hopes of avoiding flare-ups along the DMZ, Col. Minnich said. But the North Koreans have refused, he said, signaling that conditions for such military-to-military interaction are just not right under Mr. Kim.
At first, there was speculation that the young North Korean dictator was struggling to assert clear control over his nation’s military. But the feeling now is that the reduced communication in the DMZ may be an indication that the opposite dynamic is at play — that the North Korean military is under clear and strict orders from Mr. Kim not to meet with the Americans.
Mr. Kim, although young, clearly “does wield power,” Col. Minnich said.
“We have seen [it] operationally,” the colonel said. “There’s been an increase in his standards that he’s placed upon his military and their readiness level.”
A visit from Kim
Col. Minnich reminded the group that they were visiting on the three-year anniversary of the North Korean leader’s sudden appearance on the rooftop of the military building on the northern side. The colonel said tension has only risen along the line since March 3, 2012.
Mr. Kim “was up on the big building across from us, he was up on the rooftop there [and] it was a surprise,” said the colonel.
He said, however, that it has become a custom in the DMZ for each side to carefully eyeball the other whenever dignitaries or VIPs visit.
“We’ve seen a number of dignitaries who’ve been there, whether they’re North Korean or from other countries,” he said. “Just like we’ve taken our dignitaries up and they have seen them. We took [Vice President Joseph R. Biden] up there, no doubt they saw him. We took the secretary of defense, no doubt they saw him.”
The watching becomes even more intense whenever groups enter the small U.N. building — known officially as the United Nations Command conference room — at the center of the Panmunjom complex.
The structure is generally controlled by the U.S. and South Korean militaries, although the North and the South have access to the room inside, where a large conference table straddles the border between them.
The feeling was initially jovial Tuesday when the group of Americans with Col. Minnich huddled into the room and gathered on the northern side of the table — with several remarking cheekily that they always wanted to know what it felt like to stand inside North Korea.
But the atmosphere turned tense.
The two North Korean guards who had been watching Col. Minnich from the outside suddenly appeared against a window looking into the small conference room to train their camera on the Americans.
The interaction was eerie, and the colonel said it represented virtually the extent of the personal contact these days between the North Korean military and the U.N. forces massed on the South Korean side of the DMZ.
World headlines have focused on major military moves by the North, such as the 2013 nuclear test and repeated and regular live-fire artillery and missile drills — including the test-firings of two short-range ballistic missiles into the sea this week. But Col. Minnich said there also has been an increase in less-publicized but dangerously tense developments — some of which have involved shooting along the DMZ.
“There have been a number of uses of weapons over the last year, up into late last year as forces came into proximity,” he said, citing in particular an incident in October when the North Korean military fired anti-aircraft machine guns at “propaganda balloons” released into the sky by South Korean pro-democracy activists.
The balloons reportedly were stuffed with small amounts of U.S. cash, leaflets and hundreds of DVDs and books showing cultural freedom in South Korea. The goal was for the balloons to fall into towns in the north, where the goods might be disseminated through Mr. Kim’s notoriously closed economy.
But the barrage of North Korean machine gun fire dampened those plans, especially when the South Korean military responded by firing off some 40 rounds of its own toward the north.
Col. Minnich said Tuesday that such exchanges exposed the need for a return to regular military-to-military meetings inside the U.N. Command conference room — if only to discuss ways to prevent wider violence.
“There have been several instances that have reminded me of the importance to have the commission to work with both sides, to call upon reasonable actions,” the colonel said.
• Guy Taylor can be reached at gtaylor@washingtontimes.com.
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