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U.S. Still Committed To Defending South Korea From The North
Aired February 20, 2002 - 05:02 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: And President Bush accompanied South Korean President Kim Dae-jung on a trip to the Korean Peninsula's demilitarized zone. Mr. Kim shows the president a road ending at the DMZ. Mr. Bush says North Korea should finish the road, symbolically bringing both Koreas together.
Echoing another Republican president who called for reunification of Germany, President Bush today outlined his vision of a united Korea. Mr. Bush visited the Korean Peninsula's DMZ with South Korean President Kim Dae-jung. Mr. Bush signed his name to a tie on the unfinished railroad, where construction has been halted since the Korean War.
The president's message, may this railroad unite Korea. And like Ronald Reagan calling for the Berlin Wall to come down, Mr. Bush called for barriers to fall in Korea.
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GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: President Kim has just shown me a road he built, a road for peace. And he's shown me where that road abruptly ends, right here at the DMZ. That road has the potential to bring the peoples on both sides of this divided land together. And for the good of all the Korean people, the North should finish it.
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COSTELLO: About 13 hours before President Bush arrived at the DMZ, a North Korean soldier defected across the border. Few details on that are being released. While at the DMZ, Mr. Bush visited some of the 37,000 U.S. troops that are stationed there.
It's been nearly half a century since fighting stopped on the Korean Peninsula.
As CNN's Jamie McIntyre reports, times have changed but the U.S. mission has not.
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JAMIE MCINTYRE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It was called the forgotten war and it ended in truce, not triumph. Between 1950 and 1953, ill equipped and poorly trained U.S. troops battled North Korean and Chinese forces to a standstill.
Now, half a century later, the demilitarized zone along the 38th Parallel stands as a reminder that the armistice was never replaced with a peace treaty. It's been called the world's most dangerous border.
DONALD RUMSFELD, SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: They have one of the largest armies in the world. They have ballistic missiles. They have artillery pieces. They have chemical and biological weapons. They have been working hard to develop a nuclear weapon.
MCINTYRE: On one side of the DMZ, North Korea's million man army. On the other side, more than 600,000 South Korean troops, along with 37,000 Americans. And behind that, the full might of the U.S. armed forces.
If the North Korean Army ever again invades the South, the U.S. is automatically at war. America is committed to defend the South under a treaty ratified by Congress in 1954 and backed by United Nations' resolutions.
In the wake of the September 11 attacks, Pentagon sources say the U.S. military is updating war plans for the defense of South Korea, known as Up Plan 5027. But it has always included a military calculation of the force needed to remove North Korean leader Kim Jung Il.
On paper, North Korea's military is no match for America's high tech forces. But with more than a million men in arms and with a leader who remains isolated from most of the world, North Korea keeps Pentagon planners worried.
JAMES LILLY, FORMER U.S. AMBASSADOR: North Korea is a volatile state, unpredictable. They are very cunning, very shrewd. They don't make big mistakes very often. They calculate. They use military threat to get economic concessions. They use it as bluff.
MCINTYRE (on-camera): In 1994, the U.S. military drew up plans to send cruise missiles and stealth fighters against a small reactor believed to be part of North Korea's nuclear weapons program. But a negotiated settlement averted war and prevented what the Pentagon estimated, at the time, could have as many as a million casualties on both sides.
Jamie McIntyre, CNN, the Pentagon.
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COSTELLO: And you can get in depth details on the president's trip by going to our Web site. You can read all about his next stop, which will be Beijing. All you have to do is log onto CNN.com. And for AOL users, of course, the keyword is CNN.
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