The two Koreas: 70 years of danger and detente

2024-05-21 14:15:34      点击：934

A visitor wearing a face mask walks in front of the wire fence decorated with ribbons written with messages wishing for the reunification of the two Koreas at the Imjingak Pavilion in Paju, South Korea, Sunday, June 14, 2020. AP

North and South Korea are still technically at war. Here are some key moments in the decades-long standoff between them, after Pyongyang on Tuesday blew up its liaison office with the South:

- War but no peace -

The US and Soviet Union agreed to divide the Korean peninsula between them in the days after Japan's surrender ended the Second World War and its rule over the territory.

In June 1950 the Communist North invaded the capitalist South, sparking a brutal war that killed millions of people.

Beijing backed Pyongyang in the three-year conflict, while Washington threw its support behind the South ― alliances that have largely endured.

The two sides fought each other to a stalemate and hostilities ceased in 1953 with an armistice rather than a formal peace treaty, leaving them technically still at war.

- Sending in the assassins -

Pyongyang has tested the ceasefire with numerous attacks.

It sent 31 commandos to Seoul in a botched attempt to assassinate then-President Park Chung-Hee in 1968. All but two were killed.

Pyongyang launched perhaps its most audacious assassination attempt in Myanmar in 1983, killing 21 people in a bomb blast in a Yangon mausoleum, but visiting South Korean general-turned-president Chun Doo-hwan survived.

In 1987 a bomb on a Korean Air flight exploded over the Andaman Sea, killing all 115 people on board. Seoul accused Pyongyang, which denied involvement.

In 1996 a North Korean submarine on a spying mission ran aground off the eastern South Korean port of Gangneung, sparking a 45-day manhunt that ended with 24 crew members and infiltrators killed.

A clash between South and North Korean naval ships in 1999 left some 50 Northern soldiers dead.

- Going nuclear -

North Korea blows up liaison office 2020-06-16 18:13  |  North Korea
North Korea has steadfastly pursued its banned nuclear and ballistic missile programmes, seeking to build a rocket capable of delivering a warhead to the US mainland.

In 2006 it carried out its first nuclear test, and progress has accelerated under Kim Jong Un, who inherited power in 2011.

In response, the UN Security Council, US, EU and South Korea all imposed increasingly tough sanctions on the North, with the Kaesong industrial zone shut down in 2016.

Pyongyang remained defiant, carrying out its sixth nuclear test in 2017 ― its biggest by far ― and launching missiles capable of reaching the US.

Kim has since declared the country a nuclear power.

- 'Peace Olympics' -

Following years of tensions, the South's election of the pro-engagement Moon Jae-in as president and its hosting of the Winter Olympics gave the neighbours a window to reopen communications.

At the opening ceremony in February 2018 the two Koreas marched together and Moon shared historic handshakes with Kim's sister Kim Yo Jong and the North's ceremonial president Kim Yong Nam.

- Signs of detente -

Pyongyang declared soon afterwards that nuclear blasts and intercontinental missile launches would cease immediately.

A historic inter-Korean summit in April saw Pyongyang and Seoul promise to pursue the denuclearization of the peninsula and a permanent peace.

Dozens of South Koreans were able to cross over to the North in August to meet parents they had not seen since before the war.

In June, US President Donald Trump met with Kim at a historic summit in Singapore featuring the first handshake between a US president in power and North Korean leader.

- Fresh tensions -

But a second summit between the two leaders in February 2019 collapsed when they failed to agree on what the North would be willing to give up in exchange for sanctions relief.

Since November, Pyongyang has increased its weapons tests and in May 2020 the North fired multiple gunshots towards the South in the Demilitarized Zone dividing the peninsula, prompting the South to fire back.

On June 16, after days of increasingly virulent rhetoric from the North, Pyongyang blew up an inter-Korean liaison office on its side of the border. (AFP)