Lee Myung Bak′s Crying Out for Defending NLL Censured

Pyongyang, October 20 (KCNA) -- A spokesman for the Institute for Disarmament and Peace of the DPRK Foreign Ministry Saturday released the following statement:

The south Korean puppet forces have reached the extremes in their attempt to fix the illegal "northern limit line" (NLL) as the north-south maritime demarcation line in the West Sea of Korea, the most acute hotspot between the north and the south.

Traitor Lee Myung Bak, who toured Yonphyong Island on Oct. 18, let loose a spate of remarks that "it is necessary to defend NLL till the country is unified". Timing to coincide with this, voices that NLL can not become a target of compromise and negotiations under any circumstances are being heard among the south Korean military warmongers.

As well known to the world, NLL is an illegal maritime boundary line unilaterally drawn in the West Sea by Clark, the then commander of the "UN Forces" on August 30, 1953 right after the Korean War, without negotiations with the DPRK, a party to the Korean Armistice Agreement. So, it is a bogus line quite contrary to the AA without any international legal ground.

The unilateral and illegal NLL was admitted by the U.S. and the south Korean authorities in the 1970s and they have said it is in breach of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.

In 1975 the U.S. secretary of State confessed that the unilateral setting of NLL is certainly a violation of international law and afterwards several politicians of the U.S. admitted this.

Recently political, academic and public circles of south Korea said that clarified in the 1992 north-south agreement is the article calling on the north and the south to continue discussing the issue of NLL as this illegal maritime boundary line neither specified in the AA nor agreed by the north and the south has become a seed of disputes.

In the October 4 declaration which was adopted in 2007 the north and the south agreed to set up a special zone for peace and cooperation in the West Sea, aiming to defuse the tension between the north and the south produced by NLL unilaterally drawn by the U.S.

The DPRK has never recognized the illegal NLL drawn by the U.S. in a brigandish manner and will never accept it in the future, either.

The seed of distrust sowed by the U.S. is becoming the biggest time bomb which will bring another all-out war to the Korean Peninsula.

The south Korean authorities without any knowledge about the background of the creation of NLL, are undisguisedly letting loose a spate of balderdash that "it is necessary to defend NLL at the risk of lives". This is nothing but a petty trick to conceal their crimes as they overturned the past north-south agreements on turning the West Sea into a zone for peace and cooperation and brought the north-south relations to catastrophe during their office.

Lee is making foolish efforts to reverse the unfavorable condition of his group at any cost with the "presidential election" near at hand and improve his image as the "president who contributed to defending the territory".

But he would be well advised to know that such a petty trick will invite bigger disaster.

The U.S. and the south Korean authorities had better clearly understand that the army and people of the DPRK are closely watching every move of the south Korean belligerent forces and in case any provocation is made under the pretext of NLL, they are ready to make the West Sea a clear sea of reunified country without any line. -0-