South Korea’s
defense minister Han Min Koo met with his Chinese counterpart Chang Wanquan on
Wednesday to discuss a wide range of issues including military and nuclear
threats posed by North Korea and the installation of a military hotline between
Seoul and Beijing.
The two sides agreed to establish a hotline
between defense ministries and expand exchange and cooperation in the field.
Installation of a direct communication line
between the two countries has been an ongoing discussion since 2007, but
Beijing had not actively pursued the issue likely out of concern about its
relationship with Pyongyang. With this hotline, Seoul expects to be able to
work together more closely and efficiently with Beijing, when it comes to
military threats from North Korea and other security issues regarding the
Korean Peninsula.
During these defense talks, the South was
expected to once again reiterate its stance on the need for denuclearization in
the North and ask for China to play a role in dealing with Pyongyang in order
to establish stability on the peninsula.
“This [meeting] will be an opportunity to
raise the level of military cooperation between the two countries that has in
the past been somewhat slow in progress because of North Korea and the South
Korea-U.S. military alliance,” Lee Chang Hyung, director for the Center for Security and Strategy at Korea Institute for
Defense Analyses said ahead of the talks.
“It looks like they will be able to not
only discuss North Korea’s nuclear program as they have
in the past but also put on the table issues surrounding unification and sudden
changes on the peninsula,” Lee speculated. “Through this opportunity, they can establish a hotline where they
can put greater weight on discussing North Korea issues that had been prickly
in the past, and as a result, it will create greater progress in military
cooperation between the two countries, so it will deal a severe blow to the
North,” he analyzed.
China’s Minister
Chang took office in 2013 and had visited South Korea twice before that in 2003
and 2006.
