Seoul asks Pyongyang to move artillery from border

Seoul, June 17: South Korea asked North Korea in military talks last week to move its long-range artillery away from the border area to lessen tensions, authorities said on Sunday. Seoul proposed that Pyongyang redeploy its artillery to a zone 30 to 40 km away from the border. “We conveyed our position to the North that in light of consultations between the North and the US over the denuclearization issue, we have to craft measures to drastically reduce military tensions by removing practical threats,” an informed official told Yonhap News Agency.

North Korea has 14,100 artillery pieces and a majority of them are based close to the border, a South Korean defense report said in 2016. Seoul is within the range of North Korean artillery. The military talks on Thursday were held as a follow up to the Panmunjom Declaration adopted at the summit between the leaders of the two Koreas on April 27, reports Efe news. The document called for measures to reduce tensions between the two states that fought the Korean War of 1950-53. (IANS)