North Korea Urges Mutual Troop Cuts

The Communist government of North Korea proposed on Thursday a mutual reduction of its forces and those of South Korea, according to a North Korean broadcast.

The proposal, outlined by the North Korean Central News Agency, called for a phased reduction over the next three years to a level of 100,000 men on each side. Current estimated troop strength is 750,000 for North Korea and 520,000 for South Korea.

The government radio broadcast, monitored in Tokyo, declared that the north will unilaterally reduce its forces by 100,000 this year and called for a phased withdrawal of the more than 40,000 U.S. troops based in South Korea over the three-year period.

There was no immediate response from the politically embattled South Korean government or the United States. In Tokyo, however, the Naewoe Press, a news agency funded by Seoul, dismissed the proposal as propaganda. It is aimed, a Naewoe commentary said, at “rousing international attention in connection with the recent U.S.-Soviet arms reduction conference in Geneva to realize the withdrawal of American forces stationed in South Korea.”

The Communist government in Pyongyang has floated troop reduction proposals before, as recently as last December, but they have all been rejected by the Seoul government, which has branded them as a scheme to gain a military advantage and force the withdrawal of the American forces. “As long as the north and the south preserve such huge armed forces as today, peace and security cannot be guaranteed even if a democratic government desirous of peace and reunification is established in South Korea,” the North Korean agency report was quoted as saying. It said the proposal is designed to “realize true peace and detente on the Korean peninsula,” racked by a three-year war after the Communist invasion of June, 1950.

According to the report, verification of the troop reductions would be worked out under a proposed multinational conference in Geneva next year.

Sporadic direct contacts between north and south were broken off by the Communist side last year. The only current contacts are indirect.