SEOUL: Seoul began a unilateral effort to excavate Korean War remains along the border Monday as silence from Pyongyang stymied a previously agreed joint operation with the North.
The joint excavation along the Demilitarised Zone of remains from the 1950-53 conflict was part of a military agreement signed at a Pyongyang summit in September between the South’s President Moon Jae-in and the North’s leader Kim Jong Un.
Under the deal — aimed at defusing military tensions — around 100 personnel from the two sides were to jointly carry out the recovery operation from April 1 to October 31.
But progress on the key issue of the North’s nuclear weapons has since stalled, with Kim’s Hanoi summit with US President Donald Trump breaking up in February without agreement, raising doubts over the future of inter-Korean projects.
Seoul’s defense ministry said the North had not responded to its calls and the South Korean military would begin preparatory excavation work Monday on the southern side of the DMZ.
“We are making preparations so that it can be immediately shifted to a South-North joint excavation once North Korea responds,” Roh Jae-cheon, the ministry’s deputy spokesman, told reporters.
Moon — who met Kim three times last year — has long backed a policy of engagement with nuclear-armed, sanctions-hit Pyongyang and was instrumental in brokering talks between the US and North Korea.
At a meeting with his top aides on Monday, Moon said the failed US-North Korean summit in Vietnam posed a “temporary difficulty” but added: “It is clearly being confirmed that the South, the North, and the US all do not wish to go back to the past.”
Moon, who will fly to Washington next week, said his rapidly arranged summit with the US president showed the allies wanted to revive the “momentum for dialogue at an early date.”
Since Hanoi, Pyongyang and Washington have both sought to blame each other for the deadlock.
Pyongyang said it had proposed dismantling the Yongbyon complex — a sprawling site covering multiple different facilities — in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions that have isolated the North.
But US officials have said the North wanted all significant sanctions removed while not making clear exactly which facilities at Yongbyon it was willing to give up — and Trump has said that “the weapons themselves need to be on the table.”
Seoul begins war remains excavation without North Korea
Seoul begins war remains excavation without North Korea
- The joint excavation along the Demilitarised Zone of remains from the 1950-53 conflict was part of a military agreement signed at a Pyongyang summit in September
- Pyongyang said it had proposed dismantling the Yongbyon complex — a sprawling site covering multiple different facilities — in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions that have isolated the North
‘Unofficial’ talks on plastic pollution treaty to begin in Japan
- “Plastic pollution is a planetary problem that affects everyone: every country, every community and every individual,” Cordano warned after being elected
TOKYO: Delegates from around 20 countries will hold three days of “informal” talks in Japan from Sunday aimed at salvaging efforts toward a landmark global treaty on plastic pollution.
Supposedly final talks in South Korea in 2024 toward an agreement failed, and a renewed effort in Geneva last August likewise collapsed in overtime.
A Japanese Environment Ministry official said that the “informal” closed-door meeting among “working-level officials” through Tuesday was not expected to result in any official announcement.
If we don’t take concerted action, it will get much worse in the coming decades. A treaty is urgently needed.
Julio Cordano, Chile’s chief climate negotiator
“Japan is in a position of pushing for progress on the issue, and so is hosting the meeting,” the official told AFP without wishing to be named.
She added that “little progress” has been made since August, other than the election in early February of Chile’s chief climate negotiator Julio Cordano as chairman.
“Plastic pollution is a planetary problem that affects everyone: every country, every community and every individual,” Cordano warned after being elected.
“If we don’t take concerted action, it will get much worse in the coming decades. A treaty is urgently needed,” he said.
More than 400 million tonnes of plastic are produced globally each year, with half for single-use items.
A large bloc of states wants bold action such as curbing plastic production, while a smaller clutch of oil-producing states wants to focus more narrowly on waste management.
Countries expected to be present in Tokyo include big oil producers like Saudi Arabia, Russia and the United States as well as islands states Antigua and Barbuda and Palau, plus China, India and the European Union.
The UN’s environment chief told AFP in an interview in October that a global treaty remains “totally doable.”
“No one has walked away and said, ‘this is just too hopeless, we’re giving up’,” United Nations Environment Programme executive director Inger Andersen said.
