2 Koreas--Tense Border, Tentative Talks : North and South Move to Discuss Trade, Economic Cooperation

Panmunjom, the tiny truce village straddling the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea, often seems more like a tourist attraction than the flashpoint for another Korean war.

From the southern side, more than 70,000 tourists as diverse as Mother Teresa and the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders visited last year. Visitors to the northern side are fewer but they, too, come almost daily.

A “must see” is the conference room where the U.N. armistice commission meets across a felt-topped table precisely bisected by a microphone cord that is part of the border between North and South Korea.

Although they can’t agree on much else, the two sides have managed to work out a schedule to ensure that their tour groups don’t bump into one another in the conference room.

Touring this part of the DMZ, it’s easy to forget that facing each other across this 150-mile-long line, which divides Korea at roughly the 38th Parallel, are more than 1 million armed men.

2 Sides Still Foes

But 32 years after the end of the Korean War, North and South Korea remain implacable foes.

Although precise figures are classified, intelligence sources say 70% of North Korea’s 750,000-man army is within 31 miles of the border, which lies only 25 miles from Seoul.

“If they invade,” said an American soldier at Panmunjom, “we’ve been told that our life expectancy would be about 10 seconds.”

Facing north is a smaller but better-equipped force of 544,000 South Korean soldiers, bolstered by 40,000 U.S. troops and 100 U.S. aircraft.

Most South Korean officials, from President Chun Doo Hwan on down, warn that the likelihood of war is increasing.

“There is an increasing possibility that North Korea might attempt a military adventure,” South Korean Foreign Minister Lee Won Kyung warned recently. “Increasingly impatient over the widening economic gap between the south and the north, . . . they might be tempted to resort to naked armed provocations.”

“For 30 years, the North Korean Communists thought history was on their side,” added Kim Ki Hwan, chief South Korean negotiator at recent economic talks with the north. “But now the leadership is beginning to lose confidence in their system. Now they feel that, the longer they wait, the less advantageous the situation will become for them.”

Have Met Periodically

The two sides have met periodically at Panmunjom to discuss ways of improving relations, ostensibly with the aim of eventual reunification. Until now, these encounters always ended in a huff.

Recently, however, there have been signs that the dialogue might yield modest results.

Seoul-based diplomats trace the change to last year, when North Korea announced a new peace proposal it had passed privately to the Americans via the Chinese on Oct. 8--the day before North Korean agents detonated a bomb that killed scores of South Korean officials in Rangoon, Burma.

The proposal, for three-party peace talks with the United States and South Korea, was unacceptable because the north continued to insist that first the United States must withdraw its forces from the south.

But it was still significant as the first time the north had offered to let the south participate on an equal footing.

Diplomats believe North Korea has two interests in resuming a dialogue. One is to shake off its post-Rangoon pariah image. The other is economic.

North’s Economy a Factor

“The North Korean economy is in very bad shape and the leadership realizes it must do something about it,” Kim said.

South Korea also has a new interest in talking--the 1988 Olympics, which are being held in Seoul.

Hosting the Olympics is of tremendous symbolic importance to South Korea, and Chun is eager to avoid a boycott by the Soviet Union and other countries that do not recognize the Seoul government.

For this reason, diplomats said, South Korea last summer dropped its demand for an apology for the Rangoon bombing as a condition for resuming ruptured talks proposed by the north to discuss the formation of a joint Olympic team.

The gesture was reciprocated in September, when the north surprised Seoul with an offer of relief aid after severe flooding in the south. Seoul, in a bigger surprise, accepted.

In the contacts that followed, the two sides agreed not only to resume formal Red Cross talks suspended since 1973 but to hold their first-ever talks on trade and economic cooperation.

Talks May Resume

Then, abruptly, North Korea canceled both sets of talks, blaming the “Team Spirit” military maneuvers between South Korea and the United States.

The north had long known about the annual maneuvers, so few in Seoul believed the explanation. Some officials charged that the north agreed to the talks only to appear accommodating.

“The decision to cancel the talks must have been calculated beforehand,” said Cho Cheol Wha, secretary general of the South Korean Red Cross. “It shows they are only pretending to be flexible in order to overcome their isolation after Rangoon.”

Such cynicism is not universal.

Another explanation for North Korea’s cold feet, officials said, may have been the South Korean National Assembly elections held Feb. 12. The North Koreans may not have wanted to come to Seoul before the elections to avoid helping Chun’s party.

Whatever the reason, the talks appear to be about to get on the track. On Thursday, it was announced that the two Koreas will hold the economic talks in mid-May and the Red Cross talks at the end of May.