GOYANG, Gyeonggi Province -- As President Moon Jae-in and his entourage welcomed their North Korean counterparts for a historic summit on the South Korean side of the border on Friday, the North's top military officials saluted Moon while their South Korean peers only exchanged a nod or a handshake with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
The omission of formal salutes toward the leader of North Korea is a stark reminder that the North technically remains the primary enemy of South Korea since the two Koreas' brutal 1950-53 Korean War ended with a truce, not a peace treaty.
Shortly after Kim and his nine-member entourage crossed the border at the inter-Korean truce village of Panmunjom onto the South's side, Moon greeted each member of the North Korean delegation, which included the two top-level military officials standing in their full uniforms -- Ri Myong-su, the chief of the General Staff of the Korean People's Army, and Pak Yong-sik, the minister of North Korea's armed forces. Both of them gave a brief military salute to Moon.
(Yonhap)
When it was their South Korean counterparts' turn to greet Kim, their greetings did not include military salutes.
Donning a full Air Force uniform, Gen. Jeong Kyeong-doo, the chairman of the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff, exchanged a handshake with Kim without a salute or even a nod of his head despite servicemen's usual way of greeting with a military salute.
Defense Minister Song Young-moo also remained very upright when he stood face to face with Kim, exchanging a handshake and giving only a slight nod as his gesture of greeting.
The aloof manners adopted by the two South Korean top-ranking defense officials provide a throwback to the cold reality that the two countries are technically at war, 65 years after the armistice was signed.
The 1953 Armistice halted battles between the two sides in the Korean War but did not officially end the war. Since then, North Korea has been defined in South Korea as its "primary enemy."
The officials appear to have decided that formally saluting the leader of an enemy country is not proper.
The Friday summit is expected to possibly turn around the stark reality, with the two leaders set to discuss ways to replace the armistice with a peace agreement in return for the North giving up its nuclear program.(Yonhap)