It is reported that the former Moon government failed to check whether the underground nuclear facilities were destroyed when they conducted on-site verification of North Korea’s frontline guard posts(GPs) in 2018, as a part of implementing Comprehensive Military Agreement (CMA), the inter-Korean military agreement on Sep. 19 of the same year.
In December of that year, the Moon administration announced that they had confirmed the destruction of the underground facilities of the North GPs, rendering them unable to perform their duties as guard posts. However, it has been alleged that this statement was false due to inadequate verification. The Ministry of National Defense has recently initiated an investigation into these suspicions.
As per the Comprehensive Military Agreement (CMA), signed by both North and South Korea, they agreed to withdraw from all guard posts (GPs) located in the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). Initially, both sides withdrew from 11 GPs, situated within a distance of 1km of each other.
However, when the South Korean verification team arrived at the site almost 20 days after the North had claimed to have destroyed their GPs, they faced opposition from the N. Korean military, which prevented them from carrying underground observation equipment like Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR). There was no use of any other equipment either, which could search underground.
It is said that the verification was conducted only by visual inspection, without using any scientific equipment. The inspection went on for an hour and a half.
Unlike South Korea, which mainly uses above-ground fortresses, N. Korea operates its guard posts as underground fortresses, which makes it necessary to verify the destruction of underground facilities. If aforementioned claim holds true, then the past inspection was merely superficial.
After visiting North Korea, the verification team reported that their doubts about the disablement were not completely resolved. However, this was ignored. At that time, President Moon claimed, “The mutual withdrawal and verification of guard posts by South and N. Korea marked a new chapter in the 65-year history of division on the Korean Peninsula.” The Moon administration even promoted Kim Jong-un’s non-existent ‘commitment to denuclearization.’
In 2023, it was discovered that North Korea was using underground facilities that they had claimed to have disabled. This kind of deception is not limited to North Korea, as communist regimes around the world often employ deception as a basic strategy of statecraft.
North Korea has been deceiving the international community since the U.S.-North Korea Agreed Framework of 1994, by pretending to denuclearize. In June 2008, a cooling tower at the Yongbyon nuclear facility was exploded in front of officials from the U.S. State Department, but it was later revealed to be a deception.
Despite this, N. Korea is still operating the Yongbyon nuclear facility. The issue here is not only North Korea’s deception, but also the more serious problem of having people within our country who willingly believe such deceit.
