Cheney Sees Asia Communist Peril : South Korea: U.S. defense secretary visits Seoul outpost at demilitarized zone.

Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, staring across the Korean frontier at North Korean soldiers staring back, said today that communism remains a “very hostile and threatening” foe in Asia even as it seems to be dissolving in Europe.

Cheney slogged through mud and fog to make his way to this mountain-high outpost along the frontier that bisects Communist North Korea and the capitalist south, which are technically still at war under the longest truce in modern military history.

As the defense secretary used bright yellow binoculars to peer north across the scrub-covered hills and gullies, a feminine voice wafted across the chill air--a North Korean propaganda broadcast demanding the pullout of U.S. troops.

In the distance at a small, bunkered North Korean post, two soldiers could be seen staring back at the American visitors staring at them from the South Korean barbed-wire observation post.

“It’s always useful to come back to the demilitarized zone,” Cheney told reporters accompanying him. “At a time when we are welcoming changes in Eastern Europe and the erosion of the Soviet position in the Warsaw Pact, it’s important to be reminded that the United States and the Republic of Korea still face a very hostile and threatening power in the North.

“And it’s just as important for us to maintain our determination to protect freedom and democracy here in Korea and elsewhere in the world,” Cheney said.

Cheney was joined by several Korean generals in symbolically ringing a huge bell hung high in a red bell tower perched upon one of the hilltops. The bell was rung five times to honor the South Korean 5th Division that guards the region.

Cheney travels Saturday to Hong Kong before traveling on to the Philippines and Japan as part of a two-week Asian tour of the allied nations that host U.S. forces.