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Kim Eun-hye, the senior presidential secretary for press affairs, announces that President Yoon Suk-yeol has instructed that the examinations into the suspension of the Sept. 19 military agreement be made in the instance of further breaches of the South’s territory by the North on Jan. 4. (Yonhap)

On Wednesday, South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol ordered an “examination of suspending the validity” of the Sept. 19, 2018, inter-Korean military agreement if North Korea engages in further provocations that encroach on the South’s territory.

The order did not call for immediately going through procedures to end the agreement, demanding instead an “examination” in the event of additional “incursions on South Korean territory” by the North. But given that the point of the inter-Korean agreement in the first place is to prevent isolated incidents from escalating, his remarks come across as both rash and dangerous.

Since the start of 2023, both Yoon and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un have been repeatedly making coarse and strongly worded statements. It’s deeply unsettling to see this sort of situation, which raises the risk of an unintended clash erupting on the peninsula.

The military agreement in question was drafted as an addendum to the third inter-Korean summit in 2018 and the Pyongyang Joint Declaration on Sept. 19 of that year. In it, both sides agreed to halt all hostile activities in all environments, including land, sea and air.

It is true that North Korea has engaged in numerous provocations that violate the agreement, as though testing the South Korean government’s patience in the wake of Yoon’s inauguration as president. There have been 15 such cases in all since October 2022, when it fired coastal artillery into a buffer zone in the northern waters around the Northern Limit Line (NLL) of the eastern and western coasts of the peninsula.

The North also showed a blatant disregard for the agreement when it sent five small drones south of the Military Demarcation Line (MDL) and into the skies over Seoul on Dec. 26. Yoon’s orders could be seen as a response to the shock and aftermath of that drone episode.

But we also can’t afford to ignore the meaning and effectiveness of the September 2018 agreement. Its focus is on preventing escalation in border regions. It operates as a safeguard to prevent small, isolated clashes from erupting into limited or all-out warfare.

While it may be true that the North took the first steps in defanging that agreement, a disproportionate response stands to take away the benefits for the South, as well as any kind of moral high ground.

It’s because this agreement exists as a current benchmark that we are able to criticize the North’s violations and demand compliance. Indeed, even People Power Party (PPP) floor leader Joo Ho-young said late last year that it would be “premature for South Korea to be the first to suggest backing out on the basis of North Korea’s repeated violations.”

Instead of spouting rhetoric about “willingness to fight,” “retribution,” and “retaliation,” it would be better for Yoon to show more patience and make sterner demands for Pyongyang to comply with the agreement’s terms.

Even if the effects aren’t immediately apparent, there is no call for us to bring a riskier situation on ourselves by making the first move to take away the agreement’s safeguards. Certain conservatives may be demanding a hard-line response, but national security is about protecting the lives of the public as a whole.

This situation urgently demands a prudent response and approach from Yoon and his administration.

Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]