[Anchor]
North Korea has been spotted opening coastal artillery in the border area. While North Korea remains silent on the proposal for military talks, a heated debate erupted during the parliamentary audit over Unification Minister Chung Dong-young's remark that "landmines are defensive weapons."
Noh Dong-gyu reports.
[Reporter]
This is Gogun-ri, Kaesong, North Korea, located about 2 kilometers away from Ganghwa County, Incheon.
In the middle of a coastal hill where loudspeakers aimed at South Korea are installed, North Korean coastal artillery can be seen.
Even the gun barrel is visible inside the open tunnel entrance.
We observed the North's coastal artillery position for more than two hours.
The artillery port remains open, and the gun barrel is pointing toward our side.
North Korea has exposed its coastal artillery in the past as a threat during times of heightened tension.
While there has been no response from North Korea to the proposal for military talks, the Unification Minister's remark regarding the landmine explosion came under fire at the parliamentary audit.
[Chung Dong-young / Unification Minister: Linguistically speaking, the term "landmine attack" hardly holds up. Landmines are defensive weapons. A provocation is about heightening tensions, in that sense, while an attack is an "attack."]
Criticism followed from opposition lawmakers that his remarks—to the effect that while it was a North Korean provocation, it is still difficult to determine intent—would give North Korea an excuse to shift blame, and a model landmine even made an appearance.
[Park Choong-kwon / People Power Party Lawmaker: This is a North Korean landmine. I would like to place it in front of Minister Chung Dong-young. (I will decline.) How could you say such things about North Korea's landmine provocation, calling it "hard to define as an attack" and "defensive"...?]
[Chung Dong-young / Unification Minister: "Whether it was intentional or not" is a very important issue.]
Regarding the possibility of North Korea–U.S. dialogue, Foreign Minister Cho Hyun said it was also an important issue when consulting with the U.S. Secretary of State about a month ago, explaining the U.S. stance as follows.
[Cho Hyun / Foreign Minister: However, the U.S. position was, "Understood, and while we will communicate closely, we hope South Korea does not get too far ahead..."]
Minister Cho explained that this referred to the pacemaker role we took on ourselves, adding that the U.S. is also expressing gratitude as we share our intelligence and scenarios.
(Video by Lee Chan-soo | Video Editing by Jeong Sung-hoon)
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