After joining the US-led UN Command (UNC) in South Korea, Germany is prepared in principle to provide personnel to monitor the ceasefire on the Korean Peninsula, Defence Minister Boris Pistorius said during a visit to North Korea’s buffer zone.
Berlin is weighing how best to support South Korea, he said Friday. “We will now examine this until the end of the year and then move on to the next phase,” he said at the Camp Bonifas military base.
Camp Bonifas is home to the UNC, which oversees the 1953 Korean Armistice Agreement between North and South Korea. It is located near the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), a “buffer zone” between North Korea and South Korea.
“We were photographed by the North Korean side. We were photographing the North Korean side,” Pistorius said, adding that soldiers from the other side were only 50 metres away.
“For someone who still knows the Inner German border, there are many associations and at the same time it is very different, because there is a buffer zone that we do not know from Inner German history,” he said, referring to the division of Germany after the end of World War II and the inner German border between East and West.
He called the efforts to ensure transparency and prevent escalation of the situation “both oppressive and impressive at the same time.”
Germany on Friday became the 18th country to join the UN Security Council, a move that comes as tensions on the Korean Peninsula have risen after Pyongyang significantly expanded its missile tests over the past two years while simultaneously ratcheting up its rhetoric against the US and South Korea.
Kim Jong Un, the ruler of North Korea, has repeatedly called for more intensive preparations for war.
