German Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck, who is on a visit to South Korea, visited the country's heavily-fortified border with North Korea on Friday, as tensions on the Korean peninsula have been on the rise.
Following his return from the border area, Habeck compared the Korean demarcation line to the former border that separated West Germany and East Germany for decades before the end of the Cold War.
"It is a very different border to the one we know from the German division," Habeck said, adding that nevertheless the visit had reminded him of Germany's past.
The trip had also impressed on him Korea's history, the Korean War, the bloody battles and the division of the country, as well as the threat posed by North Korea following Russian President Vladimir Putin's visit there, Habeck said.
The German politician's trip to the border area comes on the heels of a visit by Putin to Pyongyang two days earlier where he and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un struck an agreement on mutual assistance in the event of an attack by a third country.
South and North Korea are separated by a 4-kilometre-wide Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) secured by a US-led UN command. The DMZ still forms the de facto border between the two countries, which have remained in a state of war under international law since the Korean War from 1950 to 1953.
The heavily-fortified buffer zone, which is around 240 kilometres long, was established across the Korean peninsula at the end of the war.
Tensions between the two countries have been rising significantly again for months.
North Korean soldiers briefly crossed the border line on Thursday, in the third such incident between the two hostile countries in less than two weeks, Seoul said on Friday.
After South Korean border patrols fired warning shots, the North Korean forces immediately retreated across the border again, said the Joint Chiefs of Staff in Seoul.
The military administration had forbidden journalists to accompany Habeck during his visit to the DMZ. His delegation said that the vice chancellor had been briefed by a US soldier from the UN command on the history of the border and the security situation at and in the demilitarized zone.
He also visited the so-called blue barracks where the armistice was agreed in 1953. The building stands directly on the border line. The visit was observed by the North Korean side, it said.
Habeck, who also serves as Germany's economy minister, arrived in South Korea on Wednesday for the first leg of a multi-day diplomatic trip through East Asia.
He is being accompanied on the trip by German business executives as well as lawmakers from Germany's parliament.
Habeck and his delegation are scheduled to continue on to China on Friday.
