09-151.pdf

The North regarded the intrusion on December 3 by two armed
North Korean spies into the Pusan area, who were subsequently
arrested, as a fabrication, although they had confessed their guilt. The
spies were captured by army soldiers and the boat that had brought
them ashore was sunk while escaping in a joint operation of army,
navy and air force units. Equipment seized included pistols, handgrenades
and ammunition. One pistol made in Belgium was the same
type as carried by the North Koreans involved in the bombing in
Burma.
To improve its image world-wide after the Rangoon incident,
North Korea continued the North-South dialogue, but the talks that
were held in the NNSC conference room on April 9, April 30 and May
25 to form a joint Korean team for the 1984 and 1988 Olympic Games
and the 1986 Asian Games failed owing to mutual distrust and
political problems such as the Rangoon incident which North Korea
denied any responsibility for. Three-party talks were also proposed
(cf. p. 333). 273
On November 23, 1984, the defection at around 11.35 a.m. of
Foreign Service Officer Vasily Yakovlevic Matuzok at the Soviet
Embassy in P’yôngyang via the MDL when he was leading a 16member
Soviet sightseeing group visiting Panmunjom caused the first
armed incident in the JSA since the 1976 axe murder. When the group
walked out of the MAC conference building, Matuzok, who for two
273_ Ch’oe, “P’anmunjôm-ûl t’onghan Nambukhan kyoryu,” 2002, pp. 101-103; Downs,
ibid., p. 164; Hapch’am chôngbo ponbu, ibid., 1999, p. 386; Kukpang chôngbo
ponbu, ibid., 1993, p. 214; Lee, op. cit., 2004, p. 204; Newsreview, “2 Armed N.K.
Infiltrators Captured Near Pusan,” December 10, 1983; Quinones, “South Korea’s
Approaches to North Korea,” p. 31. Original quotation marks.
Continued Tension but Renewed Dialogue during the 1980s
349