South Korea Floats U.S. Role in DMZ Control
South Korea's Defense Ministry advanced the proposal as Seoul pursues authority over civilian entry to the 250-kilometer-long (155 miles), 4-kilometer-wide (2.4 miles) DMZ, a news agency reported, citing a source.
Currently, the US-led UN Command controls the military buffer zone as the southern enforcer of the armistice that concluded the 1950–53 Korean War.
Following UN Command resistance to Seoul's initial approach, the Defense Ministry presented a revised plan positioning South Korea's military as the overseer of entry to zones situated south of the barbed-wire barrier within the DMZ.
The dispute has intensified after Unification Minister Chung Dong-young endorsed pending legislation designed to transfer nonmilitary DMZ access control to the South Korean government.
Chung has additionally committed to reopening three segments of the DMZ Peace Trail as part of President Lee Jae Myung's wider initiative to reconstruct inter-Korean relations.
The UN Command, however, has mounted fierce opposition to the legislative effort, declaring it "completely at odds" with the armistice agreement.
"If the legislation passes, a rational, logical, legal interpretation is that the ROK government has removed itself from the armistice and is no longer bound by it," a UN Command official told reporters last month, using the acronym for the Republic of Korea.
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