Merz visits Korean border, briefly steps onto North Korean side at Panmunjom
Wrapping up his Asia trip, Chancellor Merz visited the inter-Korean demarcation line and voiced hope for Korean unity. In Seoul he called for a global free-trade network.
Archive image · Photo: Grunpfnul / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped and resized)
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz visited the inter-Korean border at Panmunjom on Friday at the end of a trip to Asia. Inside one of the blue barracks straddled by the demarcation line, he briefly stepped onto the North Korean side. "Let us hope that Korea, too, will one day get the chance to regain its unity as a state," Merz said at the edge of the Demilitarized Zone.
Recalling German reunification 36 years ago, the chancellor said: "You can also feel at this place how much a country suffers from division." Germany has been part of the U.S.-led United Nations Command, which oversees the armistice, for two years. The Bundeswehr has two officers there.
Earlier, addressing about 1,000 business representatives at the Asia-Pacific Conference of German Business in Seoul, Merz called for a global free-trade network alongside the largely paralysed World Trade Organization. He said such an alliance would stand against unilateralism, autocratic power politics and violations of international law. Merz flies back to Berlin in the evening.