The defense ministry has proposed to the United States that South Korea's military jointly manage parts of the southern half of the heavily fortified Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) separating the two Koreas, a source said Thursday.
The proposal came as the South Korean government aims to secure control of civilian access to the 250-kilometer-long, 4-km-wide stretch of the DMZ. Currently, the U.S.-led U.N. Command (UNC) administers the military buffer zone as the south-side enforcer of the armistice that ended the 1950-53 Korean War.
Amid the UNC's outright objection to Seoul's move, the defense ministry proposed a measure under which South Korea's military oversees entry to parts of areas located south of the barbed-wire fence within the DMZ.
The South's fence technically runs alongside the southern boundary of the DMZ, or the Southern Limit Line (SLL), located 2 km south of the Military Demarcation Line, the inter-Korean border.
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