South Korea announces suspending military agreement that prevented war with North Korea

In 2018, Seoul and Pyongyang agreed to ensure that no war broke out on the peninsula. But the South Korean government announced on Monday June 3 that it was about to suspend this military agreement.

In Panmunjeom, near the border between the two Koreas, between the South and the North, in 2018, the two countries agreed to ensure that no war breaks out on the Korean peninsula. This military agreement is about to be suspended by the South Korean government, the National Security Council announced on Monday June 3, 2024 in Seoul. Unfortunately, nothing very surprising, given the military directions taken by Seoul and Pyongyang over the past four years.

The South is increasing joint exercises with the United States, Japan and the Philippines, and constitutes one of the main allies of the Americans in their strategy of encircling Chinese territory. The North, for its part, spends most of its time letting the whole world know the extent of its technological advances: nuclear arsenal, missiles, drones, submarines… Barely four days ago, under the eye of Kim Jong-un, accompanied by excited comments from North Korean television, the army carried out a new firing of 18 short-range ballistic missiles which ended their trajectory in the East Korean Bay, very close to Japanese territorial waters .

This type of hostilities is almost part of the news today: declarations and maneuvers in the South, test launches in the North. We hardly pay attention to it anymore, but that’s a mistake, because in reality, each of these events contributes to intensifying tensions. Particularly since November 2023, when Kim Jong-un authorized the placing into orbit of a military intelligence satellite for South Korea. A red line was crossed at that time and the non-aggression pact agreement signed in 2018 was, for the first time, called into question. “The North has violated the ceasefire more than 3,500 times. Therefore, the cessation of hostilities zone no longer exists. Our military will conduct shooting exercises in accordance with our own plans rather than reacting to enemy actions one by one in the Western Northwest“, said a senior South Korean official in January. The peaceful intentions of 2018 between the North and the South have already been in decline for many months.

But if this agreement is on the verge of officially becoming obsolete, it is for a rather unusual reason, a completely different form of provocation, nothing military, no missile or satellite, but balloons filled with waste and excrement animals crossed the border to end up in South Korea. The North sent nearly 600 last week. Of the “sincere gifts“, says Pyongyang in response to those regularly sent by Seoul. Indeed, South Korea sends the same type of flying objects, but with significantly different content: medicines, recordings of K-pop music and anti- regime A potentially more effective method than missiles to influence the North Koreans and weaken the Kim Jong-un regime. It is because of these balloon exchanges that the 2018 military agreement is now on the verge. to disappear.