Many people complain about wearing mask outdoors, imagine having to wear an entire hazmat suit:
North Korean troops have become somewhat of a rare sight. Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, North Korean soldiers have avoided showing themselves in public to ward off the disease, at the cost of suspending in-person talks with the U.N. Command about upholding the armistice.
Korea Times
“They no longer meet with us face to face,” said Lt. Col. Griff Hofman of the U.N. Command Military Armistice Commission behind the sky-blue conference huts at the Joint Security Area in Panmunjom managed by the commission.
“It’s all done via the hotline, and they generally stay in Panmungak,” he said, referring to the main building on the North Korean side of the area that is also known as the Phanmun Pavilion. “If North Korean troops needed to go outdoors, they wore hazmat suits.”
You can read more at the link.
For anyone looking to take a tour of the JSA, the popular tours will restart this week:
Tours to the southern side of the truce village of Panmunjom will resume this week and visitors will be allowed to explore an expanded area, the South Korean defense ministry said Monday.
Stars & Stripes
The popular tours to the Joint Security Area, which straddles the heavily fortified border, were suspended in October to facilitate efforts to demilitarize the buffer zone.
North and South Korea agreed during their historic April 27, 2018, summit in Panmunjom to allow visitors freedom of movement within the JSA from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
That plan has been delayed because the U.S.-led United Nations Command, which oversees the area, and the two Koreas have not agreed on a joint code of conduct deemed necessary for security purposes.
South Korea decided “to resume field trips on the southern side” beginning Wednesday to mark the summit’s first anniversary, according to the defense ministry.
Past tours, which local officials have said drew some 100,000 visitors per year, were tightly controlled.
Visitors will now get to see more sites than had been previously allowed, including the blue footbridge where South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un had a private chat and the pine tree that was planted to commemorate the meeting.
You can read more at the link.
This photo, provided by South Korea’s defense ministry, shows military officials from the two Koreas and the U.N. Command carrying out joint work to verify the disarmament of the Joint Security Area inside the Demilitarized Zone. (Yonhap)
It’s official the JSA has now been disarmed:
The two Koreas and the U.S.-led U.N Command (UNC) on Thursday wrapped up the process of disarming the Joint Security Area in the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), Seoul’s defense ministry said.
As of 1 p.m., they completed the work of withdrawing military posts, armed troops and firearms from the JSA in the buffer zone separating the two Koreas, in line with last month’s inter-Korean agreement aimed at reducing tensions, preventing accidental clashes and building mutual trust.
On Friday and Saturday, the three sides will carry out joint verification work to ensure that the JSA is completely disarmed.
“The military authorities of the two Koreas and the UNC will make joint efforts to ensure that the JSA disarmament, stated in the Sept. 19 military agreement, will be implemented normally,” the ministry said in a statement. [Yonhap]
You can read more at the link, but the ROK soldiers there better be ready to put their taekwondo to use.
