North Korea blew up 10 of its front-line guard posts in the Demilitarized Zone separating the two Koreas on Tuesday in accordance with agreements made with South Korea earlier this year.

Interested in North Korea? Add North Korea as an interest to stay up to date on the latest North Korea news, video, and analysis from ABC News. Add Interest

The explosions were carried out simultaneously within a four-minute time frame after the North notified the South of the project, according to South Korea’s Defense Ministry.

North Korean soldiers have been destroying the brick structures over the past couple of weeks. Analysts said they most likely decided to demolish the guard posts all at once to meet the Nov. 30 deadline.

A North Korean guard post that used to oversee the South Korean side of the heavily-fortified border was covered in black and white smoke after debris filled the air at the moment of the explosion. Video provided by South Korea’s defense ministry showed the process of dismantling the guard posts.

South Korea is also in the process of tearing down 10 concrete guard posts -- using excavators instead of dynamite for environmental reasons.

Jung Yeon-je/Pool via AP

“We aim to verify the dismantlement, and ultimately withdraw all guard posts in both North and South Korean border military demarcation line,” Choi Hyun-soo, South Korea’s defense ministry spokesperson said during a briefing Tuesday.

The demolition of guard posts on both sides of the border at the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) is part of a series of moves that South Korean president Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un had agreed to completely ‘demilitarize’ the joint security area during the third inter-Korean summit in September.

“ ” We aim to verify the dismantlement, and ultimately withdraw all guard posts in both North and South Korean border military demarcation line.

Both sides had already withdrawn all firearms from a joint security area (JSA) in Panmunjom and military presence was limited last month to 35 unarmed military personnel each.

The next step will be to open up both sides of the Panmunjom to the public for guided tour groups by early next month.

But skeptics in Seoul say denuclearization talks must precede before any of these inter-Korean arms control measures are carried out.

“Demolishing guard posts are a meaningful step forward in the sense that in effect it will help minimize military conflict between the two countries, but conventional weapons control without denuclearization is not enough,” Shin Beom-chul, director of center for security and unification at the Seoul-based Asan Institute for Policy Studies, told ABC News.

All the joint actions are preludes to a grand plan for a possible visit by North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to Seoul, which the two countries hope to take place in December.

But analysts in Seoul say the much-anticipated fourth Kim-Moon summit will depend heavily on whether Washington and Pyongyang come to an agreement for a second summit between Kim and U.S. President Donald Trump.

The U.S. Special Representative for North Korea Stephen Biegun and his South Korean counterpart Lee Do-Hoon will meet in Washington on Tuesday to discuss ongoing diplomatic efforts, sustained implementation of United Nations sanctions, and inter-Korean cooperation, according to the U.S. Department of State.</s>North Korea blew up 10 of its front-line guard posts in the Demilitarized Zone separating the two Koreas on Tuesday in accordance with agreements made with South Korea earlier this year.</s>SEOUL, South Korea – North Korea on Tuesday blew up some of its front-line guard posts as part of an agreement to ease tensions along its heavily fortified border with South Korea, Seoul’s Defense Ministry said.

In September, the Koreas’ militaries agreed at a leaders’ summit in Pyongyang to eventually dismantle all guard posts inside the 248-kilometer (155-mile) -long, 4-kilometer (2.5-mile) -wide border. They later withdrew weapons and troops from 11 of their guard posts and decided to completely dismantle 10 of them by the end of November.

Seoul’s Defense Ministry said it confirmed the dismantling of 10 North Korean guard posts on Tuesday. A ministry statement said North Korea had informed the South of its plans in advance.

South Korea began dismantling 10 of its guard posts with dynamite and excavators last week. Ministry officials said Tuesday that they haven’t completed the demolitions yet.

More: North Korea running at least 13 secret operating bases for ballistic missile program, new study shows

The Korean border, the world’s most heavily armed with an estimated 2 million land mines, has been the site of deadly fighting and bloodshed. Called the Demilitarized Zone, it was originally created as a buffer at the end of the 1950-53 Korean War.

South Korea had about 60 posts inside the DMZ guarded by layers of barbed wire and manned by troops with machine guns. North Korea was estimated to have 160 such front-line posts. Once the dismantling is done, the two Koreas are to jointly verify their work by the end of December. They haven’t decided when they will dismantle the rest of the guard posts.</s>SEOUL, South Korea >> North Korea today blew up some of its front-line guard posts as part of an agreement to ease tensions along its heavily fortified border with South Korea, Seoul’s Defense Ministry said.

SEOUL, South Korea >> North Korea today blew up some of its front-line guard posts as part of an agreement to ease tensions along its heavily fortified border with South Korea, Seoul’s Defense Ministry said.

In September, the Koreas’ militaries agreed at a leaders’ summit in Pyongyang to eventually dismantle all guard posts inside the 248-kilometer (155-mile) -long, 4-kilometer (2.5-mile) -wide border. They later withdrew weapons and troops from 11 of their guard posts and decided to completely dismantle 10 of them by the end of November.

Seoul’s Defense Ministry said it confirmed the dismantling of 10 North Korean guard posts today. It said North Korean soldiers had used hammers to tear down parts of the guard posts ahead of today’s near-simultaneous demolitions. A ministry statement said North Korea had informed the South of its plans in advance.

The ministry released photos showing parts of structures on what it said was the North Korean side of the central portion of the border, an explosion with black smoke at the site, and debris scattered around the area with no trace left of the structure.

South Korea began dismantling 10 of its guard posts with dynamite and excavators last week. Ministry officials said today that they haven’t completed the dismantling work yet.

The Korean border, the world’s most heavily armed with an estimated 2 million land mines, has been the site of deadly fighting and bloodshed. Called the Demilitarized Zone, it was originally created as a buffer at the end of the 1950-53 Korean War.

South Korea had about 60 posts inside the DMZ guarded by layers of barbed wire and manned by troops with machine guns. North Korea was estimated to have 160 such front-line posts. Once the dismantling is done, the two Koreas are to jointly verify their work by the end of December. They haven’t decided when they will dismantle the rest of the guard posts.

Under the September agreements, the Koreas have also taken steps to disarm the shared border village of Panmunjom, halted live-fire drills along the border and have been removing mines at a front-line area to conduct their first joint searches for Korean War dead.

Relations between the Koreas have improved since North Korean leader Kim Jong Un reached out to South Korea and the United States early this year with a vague promise to achieve the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. U.S.-North Korea talks on the North’s nuclear program haven’t produced much progress since Kim and U.S. President Donald Trump held the countries’ first summit in Singapore in June.</s>Seoul, South Korea (AP) — North Korea on Tuesday blew up some of its front-line guard posts as part of an agreement to ease tensions along its heavily fortified border with South Korea, Seoul’s Defense Ministry said.

In September, the Koreas’ militaries agreed at a leaders’ summit in Pyongyang to eventually dismantle all guard posts inside the 248-kilometer-long, 4-kilometer-wide border. They later withdrew weapons and troops from 11 of their guard posts and decided to completely dismantle 10 of them by the end of November.

Seoul’s Defense Ministry said it confirmed the dismantling of 10 North Korean guard posts on Tuesday. A ministry statement said North Korea had informed the South of its plans in advance.

South Korea began dismantling 10 of its guard posts with dynamite and excavators last week. Ministry officials said Tuesday that they haven’t completed the demolitions yet.

The Korean border, the world’s most heavily armed with an estimated 2 million land mines, has been the site of deadly fighting and bloodshed. Called the Demilitarized Zone, it was originally created as a buffer at the end of the 1950-53 Korean War.

South Korea had about 60 posts inside the DMZ guarded by layers of barbed wire and manned by troops with machine guns. North Korea was estimated to have 160 such front-line posts. Once the dismantling is done, the two Koreas are to jointly verify their work by the end of December. They haven’t decided when they will dismantle the rest of the guard posts.

Under the September agreements, the Koreas have also taken steps to disarm their shared border village of Panmunjom, halted live-fire drills along the border and have been removing mines at a front-line area to conduct their first joint searches for Korean War dead.

Relations between the Koreas have improved since North Korean leader Kim Jong Un reached out to South Korea and the United States early this year with a vague promise to achieve the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. U.S.-North Korea talks on the North’s nuclear program haven’t produced much progress since Kim and U.S. President Donald Trump held the countries’ first summit in Singapore in June.</s>SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea says North Korea has blown up some of its own frontline guard posts as part of agreements to ease tensions in the rivals' heavily fortified border.

The Defense Ministry says its military confirmed the dismantling of 10 North Korean guard posts on Tuesday. It says North Korea had informed the South of its plans in advance.

In September, the Koreas agreed to dismantle all of guard posts inside the 248-kilometer (155-mile) -long, 4-kilometer (2.5-mile) -wide border. They later each withdrew weapons and troops from 11 of their guard posts and decided to completely dismantle 10 of them.

South Korea has been dismantling 10 of its guard posts with dynamites and excavators.

The Korea's border has been the site of numerous cases of deadly fighting and bloodshed.</s>North Korea has threatened to aim fire at the lighting equipment used by American and South Korean troops at a truce village inside the Demilitarized Zone that divides the two Koreas.

In a statement Saturday, the North's Korean People's Army accused U.S. and South Korean soldiers of "deliberate provocations" by aiming their lights at North Korean guard posts at Panmunjom since Friday evening.

The statement came hours after the United Nations Security Council issued a statement strongly condemning four North Korean ballistic missile launches in July and August.

On Tuesday, the American-led U.N. Command in South Korea accused North Korea of planting land mines near the truce village.</s>South Korea had about 60 posts inside the DMZ guarded by layers of barbed wire and manned by troops with machine guns. North Korea was estimated to have 160 such front-line posts. Once the dismantling is done, the two Koreas are to jointly verify their work by the end of December. They haven't decided when they will dismantle the rest of the guard posts.</s>SEOUL (Reuters) - A year of warming relations between North and South Korea has raised the prospects of closer ties, if not some form of unification for the still-warring neighbors far in the future. But it might not be obvious in a typical South Korean classroom.

“I really don’t know anything,” 17-year-old student Roh Ha-na said. “It’s like only twice a year that the school teaches about unification and national security, and about North Korean life... but I just let most of it go in one ear and out the other.”This year’s inter-Korean détente has highlighted what many observers see as a lack of knowledge among South Koreans about their northern neighbor, prompting government efforts to revamp the way South Koreans learn about North Korea and unification.

Baek Jun-kee, the head of South Korea’s Institute for Unification Education says current education methods have failed to show young South Koreans the importance of a nuanced understanding of North Korea, its people and leader Kim Jong Un.

“If we don’t approach the issue in a rational manner or show how the issue affects (students’) personal lives in middle school or high school, it will be difficult to keep their attention,” Baek told Reuters in an interview.

The education shortcomings are contributing to a shortage of North Korea experts across public and private institutions at a time when increased cultural and governmental exchanges between the two Koreas make them all the more important, analysts say.

“Every regional government has rolled out plans for inter-Korean exchange, but they don’t have any experts, no knowledge, no networks,” said Hong Min, a research fellow at the Korea Institute for National Unification. “When the heads of South Korean conglomerates went along to the September Pyongyang summit, most of them didn’t have an in-house North Korea expert to brief the chief.”

After facing criticism at a parliamentary hearing earlier this month over funding cuts to education programs, Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyon told lawmakers creating a new curriculum on unification was “crucial and urgent”.

Cut off from the North for 70 years and still technically at war after their 1950-53 conflict ended in a truce not a peace treaty, many South Koreans have come to see unification as an increasingly distant and unrealistic goal.

Surveys show younger generations of South Koreans are particularly ignorant or apathetic about their northern neighbors, seeing them as a troublesome distraction from the more pressing concerns of work or school.

Interviews with 17 high school students revealed most had never heard of the ‘parallel progress’ policy key to North Korean affairs this decade. Most didn’t know about the growth of private markets that has transformed many areas of North Korea’s economy.

“I’ve never heard about these North Korean issues in school, aside from learning about the Korean War in history class,” said Moon So-in, a 17-year-old student at Sunil Girls’ High School.

“My friends don’t seem very interested since we are so used to being a divided country.”

Education in South Korea is focused on competing for college entrance, culminating in high-pressure nationwide exams in the last year of high school, on which students stake their futures.

North Korea is “not on the test,” students and teachers said, and is therefore seen as a “waste of precious time,” said high school teacher Choi Ki-bok.

Generally, North Korea is addressed in a single chapter once a year in 4th and 6th grade, briefly in middle school and once in high school, two teachers said.

In higher education, meanwhile, five out of six North Korean studies departments at South Korean universities have been shut down or changed into other programs in recent years, in part because of a lack of applicants.

In North Korea, the South appears to be discussed more often in schools. As well as propaganda, North Korean defectors say they were taught minute details about the South.

“I was taught South Korean geography down to what minerals and grains are produced in each region, history that happened on South Korean soil,” said Park Na-ri, a North Korean defector educator who taught Korean and literature in Pyongyang and now teaches defector children in Seoul.

“I was shocked to find South Koreans know much less about where anything in North Korea is,” she said, noting that ignorance can lead to a lack of empathy for North Koreans.

Five South Korean educators interviewed by Reuters said teachers don’t feel equipped to navigate the thorny issue of North Korea, which in the words of one high school teacher is “an enemy, a long-lost brother, and a separate country sharing a border, depending on who you ask”.

The Institute for Unification Education, which oversees all lower education on North Korea, says it is setting up the first-ever year-long training programs for teachers to learn how to teach North Korea.

That will include a shift away from rote teaching on unification as a given to a more flexible approach focused more on the goal of peace and designed to spark discussions among students.

This year, the 91-page “Unification Education Guidelines” was cut down to 48 pages and renamed “Unification and Peace Education, Directions and Viewpoints”, mirroring President Moon Jae-in’s argument that reaching peace with North Korea is a more pressing and realistic goal than full unification.</s>What is the state of diplomacy on the Korean peninsula? Are we again heading toward the lip of war, or is progress being made at an expected pace? Are there Asian Neocons fanning the flames for conflict in Pyongyang much as others did with Baghdad?

A year ago, in November 2017, John Brennan estimated the chance of a war with North Korea at 20 to 25 percent. Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, said the odds were 50/50. The New York Times claimed we were “slouching toward war” with the North, on a “collision course.” National security adviser HR McMaster said North Korea represented “the greatest immediate threat to the United States” and that the potential for war with the communist nation grew each day. The U.S. lacked an ambassador in Seoul; Victor Cha was rejected by Trump because, according to “sources and reports,” he didn’t support a preemptive strike on Pyongyang. It was reported the U.S. was “imminently preparing for an attack on North Korea,” driven in part by hawks like Mike Pompeo and John Bolton.

All that was wrong.

Cha, it appears, didn’t in fact support what Trump actually was planning: not a preemptive strike, but a summit meeting with Kim Jong Un, held some five months ago in Singapore following a first try at courtship aside the Seoul Olympics in January 2018. World leaders meeting to talk peace is historically seen as a good thing. Yet the American media consensus was a president they believe is roundly despised globally conveyed “legitimacy” on Kim Jong Un, no matter that his family has ruled North Korea for some seven decades, and his country already holds a seat at the United Nations. No shortage of experts from South Korea universities and American think tanks were found to support those claims.

The media generally ignored (in return for the U.S. postponing a handful of military exercises) “concessions,” which were deeply criticized by an American media which has failed to note the U.S. has actually resumed some exercises, the North unilaterally stopped ICBM testing (the missiles which might someday be able to reach the U.S.) and nuclear detonations. It released American hostages, and took steps to close down two nuclear missile facilities. Kim Jong-un fired top military leaders who dissented over his approaches to South Korea and the United States.

Officials from North and South now meet regularly, and U.S. diplomats engage with both sides on an ongoing basis; Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has been to Pyongyang. Numerous practical steps have been taken along the DMZ to reduce the chance of accidents. South Korea’s unification minister in charge of North Korea issues Cho Myoung-gyon will visit the United States this week, where he is expected to meet Pompeo. This is the first time in four years for South Korea’s unification minister to visit Washington. On the last visit, in 2014, then-Secretary of State John Kerry refused to meet with his predecessor in line with the Obama (and Bush) administrations’ policy of ignoring North Korea in hopes the problem would go away.

Yet the headlines this week in the New York Times and other major U.S. outlets scream of a “great deception” by the North Koreans, evidenced by a hardline think tank — helmed in part by Victor Cha — “discovering” North Korean missile facilities already long known to U.S. intelligence (Cha’s lo-rez commercial satellite photos are dated March, months before the Trump-Kim summit, so everyone who mattered already knew.)

In a matter of a few paragraphs, Cha and the Times blow this “discovery” up to announce, without any evidence, “What everybody is worried about is that Trump is going to accept a bad deal — they give us a single test site and dismantle a few other things, and in return they get a peace agreement” that formally ends the Korean War. Mr. Trump, he said, “would then declare victory, say he got more than any other American president ever got, and the threat would still be there.”

What is the real state of diplomacy on the Korean peninsula? Are we again heading toward the lip of war?

Of course not. South Korea’s presidential spokesperson put those “new” missile facilities into the perspective Trump’s critics lack, saying “North Korea has never promised to shut down this missile base. It has never signed any agreement, any negotiation that makes shutting down missile bases mandatory… There is no agreement, no negotiation that makes it necessary for it to be declared.” In other words, there can be no deception where there was no agreement.

To call what the Times discovered a “deception” is deeply misleading. The Singapore declaration and the inter-Korean summit declarations of April 27 and September 19 this year do not commit Pyongyang to disclose the sites. What is new to the Times is actually old news; Kim Jong Un in his January 2018 New Year’s Day guidance stated North Korea would shift to the mass producing nuclear weapons in such facilities. “The nuclear weapons research sector and the rocket industry should mass-produce nuclear warheads and ballistic missiles, the power and reliability of which have already been proved to the full, to give a spur to the efforts for deploying them for action,” Kim said. The Times in fact more or less acknowledged all this in September, before being suprised by it in November.

And the Times’ big scary takeaway, that the old/new facilities are in caves, confuses tactical concealment with some sort of nefarious political “deception.” Did they expect the missiles to be worked on in the parking lot outside Kim’s villa?

One issue only lightly touched by a western media obsessed with parsing tweets as their stab at journalism is the ongoing rush forward driven by the two Koreas themselves, what under any other media climate would be hailed as a huge series of successes but which falls in 2018 under the Trump Is Always Wrong Shadow. In a short time the two states established psuedo-embassies just north of the DMZ, where representatives from the two Koreas have met more than 60 times. The office has become a clearinghouse for over a dozen projects launched during the summit. There are plans for a massive binational project to link roads and railroads severed during the Korean War.

North and South Korea have begun removing landmines from the border, drawn back some troops, and most recently held a third leaders’ summit in September in Pyongyang North Korean leader Kim offered to permanently dismantle two key ICBM facilities under the observation of outside experts. He also offered to negotiate further on the permanent shut down of the nuclear facility at Yongbyon. South Korean President Moon Jae-In, for his part, better than the U.S. understands the future is ultimately about economics, not nukes. Moon seeks sanctions relief as negotiations move forward (little is ever accomplished without some give and take.) “I believe the international community needs to provide assurances that North Korea has made the right choice to denuclearize and encourage North Korea to speed up the process,” he said this week in Paris during a visit with French President Emmanuel Macron. If the western media is correct that Trump is being duped, played, deceived, and cheated by the North, what must they think about the faster pace set by the South? After all, a U.S. miscalculation means we all switch from Samsung to Apple phones made in China, while South Korea risks being turned into a wasteland dotted only with signs for Nuka Cola.

Left off to the side is that it has been only five months since the historic summit in Singapore. Obama’s agreement with Iran, which did not even involve actual working nukes, took almost two years to conclude. Cold War negotiations with the Soviet Union ran across administrations, extending the broader process into decades of talks, and were aimed at goals much shorter than full denuclearization. Five months is barely enough time to grow a decent garden, never mind resolve multinational problems that reach back to 1945.

With North Korea, there is no history of trust, no basis of goodwill to build on. That all has to be created, built from scratch, as part of the heavy lifting of diplomacy. The ultimate goal — denuclearization — may or may not someday come to pass, but if it does it will be the result of years of more small steps forward than small steps back. Diplomacy is about moving the goalposts and embracing the long game, not playing chicken. It will require the North’s nuclear weapons to become unnecessary, as the North agrees to and is allowed to become so engaged with the global system that it finds itself no longer in need of such a powerful deterrence to attacks by its neighbors. Diplomacy requires one to at least understand the opponent’s goals and motivations, even if you don’t agree with them.

There exists an industry of sorts devoted to portraying North Korea as an eviler than evil empire, with Kim as a parody of the movie Dr. Evil. These hardliners, ensconced mostly in universities in South Korea and think tanks in the U.S., have been around since the Cold War to make sure the case for the militarization of South Korea and American support for various South Korean military dictators never lacked public advocates. They act as mouthpieces for North Korean defectors with horror stories, and are quick to seize on anything to amplify the threat. Older readers will remember similar mostly defunct “industries” set up to do the same over the actions of Cuba, China, and the Soviet Union once (though the Red Threat gang is trying to make a comeback over Bond villian wanna-be Putin.)

Victor Cha himself is a kind of one man gloom machine, writing regularly of the impossibility of denuclearization. His old articles focus fearfully on meetings canceled them (but since successfully concluded; fatalism ignores the future) he in fact represents a kind of Asian neocon, an industry dedicated to the impossibility of peace on the peninsula as long as the Kim dynasty remains in power. Cha’s home organization, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, for example, features multiple former Secretaries of Defense on its board and as trustees, and is well-funded by elements of the military industrial complex. Of the plan to link railroads across the DMZ, what any sane person would see as progress, the organization grumbled the “move is expected to increase friction with its traditional ally Washington over the pace of inter-Korean engagement.”

So shame on those hardline groups — let’s call them Asian Neocons, for they want regime change in the North in the same way as Cheney, Rumsfeld, et al, wanted it in the Middle East — and shame on the New York Times for morphing its Trump-is-always-wrong editorial policy into presenting something long-known to U.S. intelligence as something new enough to declare deception has overtaken the diplomatic long game on the Korean Peninsula.

As they did during the run up to the Iraq War, the Times is once again serving as a platform for those who cannot see or will not wait for a peaceful way forward.

Deception? The deception, it is clear, is all (again) on the side of the neocons. They seek to destroy any chance of lasting peace with unrealistic expectations and by announcing failure at goals never actually set. Because if not diplomacy, then what is the alternative? Theirs is not pessimism, it is fatalism. Success instead should be measured by the continued absence of war and the continued sense that war is increasingly unlikely. Anyone demanding more than that wants things to fail.
North Korea blows up ten of its front-line guard posts in the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) in accordance with agreements made with South Korea earlier this year.