The secretary of defense told U. S. troops at the « truce village » that war is not the goal as nuclear tensions remain high.
On his first visit to the tense but eerily quiet frontier between North and South Korea as U. S. secretary of defense, Jim Mattis conveyed the message he hopes will win the day: Diplomacy is the answer to ending the nuclear crisis with the North, not war.
He made the point over and over – at the Panmunjom « truce village » where North literally meets South; at a military observation post inside the Demilitarized Zone, and in off-the cuff comments to U. S. and South Korean troops.
« We’re doing everything we can to solve this diplomatically – everything we can, » he told the troops after alighting from a Black Hawk helicopter that had ferried him to and from the border some 25 miles north of central Seoul.
« Ultimately, our diplomats have to be backed up by strong soldiers and sailors, airmen and Marines, » he added, « so they speak from a position of strength, of combined strength, of alliance strength, shoulder to shoulder. »
At Panmunjom, where the armistice ending the Korean war was signed in July 1953, Mattis quoted Secretary of State Rex Tillerson as saying, « Our goal is not war. » The aim, he said, is to compel the North to completely and irreversibly eliminate a nuclear weapons program that has accelerated since President Donald Trump took office.
Despite unanimous condemnation by the U. N. Security Council of the North’s missile launches and nuclear tests, « provocations continue, » Mattis said.
As Mattis arrived at Panmunjom alongside South Korean Defense Minister Song Young-moo, a small group of apparent tourists watched from the balcony of a building on North Korea’s side of the line that marks the inter-Korean border. Uniformed North Korean guards watched silently as Mattis and Song stood just yards away.
Atop Observation Post Ouellette, where he could see deep into North Korea and hear their broadcast taunts of the South, Mattis listened to Song recount some of the history of the 1950-53 Korean war in which thousands of Americans and perhaps more than a million Koreans died in a conflict that remains officially unsettled.
