Draft on Sea Transit Challenged

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Draft on Sea Transit Challenged

Appearing before the Unification, Foreign Affairs and Trade Committee on the first anniversary of the June 15 inter-Korean summit, Unification Minister Lim Dong-won was under heavy grilling Friday. Legislators questioned whether a secret negotiation was be-hind the North Korean ships' unprecedented passages through southern waters this month.

Triggering the battle was an article in Friday's JoongAng Ilbo that reported that South and North Korea had drafted a maritime accord that was left unsigned when Pyongyang abruptly canceled the fifth round of ministerial talks in March. According to the article, the draft includes acknowledgment of the right of innocent passage for cargo ships through the Cheju Strait, a plan to designate special sea route between the two Koreas, and agreement that ships from both sides may use the other's port facilities on the same terms as domestic traffic.

Legislators cited the document as a possible explanation of the incursions of North Korean ships into the Cheju Strait and across the Northern Limit Line that began June 3. Representative Yoo Heung-soo of the Grand National Party demanded that the government disclose the channels through which the two sides had worked on the draft. "In the draft document, there is a clause guaranteeing free passage of ships of South and North," he said. "Does not this amount to admitting the right of innocent passage?"

Representatives Cho Woong-kyu and Kim Yong-kap of the Grand National Party said that the "North Korean captain said in a radio communication message with our Navy that it was 'an order from the top,' and passage through territorial waters was already agreed upon."

The unification minister said that "the two sides were reviewing setting up rules for sea travel. But we did not go through an unofficial channel with the North."

The Ministry of Maritime Affairs and Fisheries admitted that it had been working on the draft. "But the work has no relation to the recent violation of the Northern Limit Line or the right of innocent passage," a spokesman said.




by Choi Hoon

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