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place there. Six rounds of prime-minister talks were subsequently<br />

held between September 1990 and February 1992. 294<br />

At the fifth round of talks, the prime ministers signed the<br />

Agreement on Reconciliation, Non-aggression and Exchanges and<br />

Cooperation (hereafter “Basic Agreement”) on December 13, 1991.<br />

They signed the Joint Declaration on the Denuclearization of the<br />

Korean Peninsula (hereafter “Joint Declaration”) on December 31,<br />

1991. According to Donald Gregg, American ambassador to South<br />

Korea at the time, the key to the signing of the documents had been the<br />

cancellation of the 1992 Team Spirit exercise. Both documents were<br />

ratified at the sixth round of talks in February 1992. Notably, North<br />

Korean Prime Minister Yôn Hyông-muk called the Basic Agreement<br />

“the most valuable achievement ever made between the South and<br />

North Korean authorities.” Under this agreement, both parties<br />

reaffirmed the unification principles expressed in the 1972 July 4 Joint<br />

Communiqué (cf. p. 257). Both sides pledged “...to exert joint efforts<br />

to achieve peaceful unification.”<br />

Parts of the contents in the sections on reconciliation and<br />

non-aggression are basically identical with the Armistice Agreement.<br />

Article 5 refers to it: “Both parties shall endeavor together to transform<br />

the present armistice regime into a firm state of peace between the<br />

South and the North and shall abide by the present Military Armistice<br />

Agreement (of July 27, 1953) until such time as such a state of peace<br />

has taken hold.” Article 11 also refers to it: “The North-South<br />

demarcation line and areas for non-aggression shall be identical with<br />

294_ Ch’oe, ibid., 2002, pp. 112-114; Mueller-Lhotska and Millett, op. cit., p. 102;<br />

Quinones, op. cit., pp. 21, 35-6.<br />

North Korea Incapacitates the MAC and the NNSC in the 1990s<br />

379

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