By Jung Sung-ki
Staff Reporter
The government plans to begin removing more than 600 kilometers of barbed wire set up along coastal and river areas in the country as part of efforts to modernize the border system and resolve local residents' inconveniences caused by the wire fences, government officials said on Wednesday.
The plan was endorsed during a policy-coordination meeting presided over by Prime Minister Han Duck-soo.
The three-phase plan will affect a total of 644.3 kilometers of barbed wire fences across the nation, they said.
In the first-stage, the military will dismantle by the end of this year 97.2 kilometers of barbed wire in residential and tourist zones and an additional 40.6 kilometers of barbed wire will be removed by the end of 2009 in the second stage, officials said.
The rest will be replaced with high-tech surveillance systems.
The Defense Ministry plans to introduce a robot surveillance system for the defense of the border and coastal areas by 2011.
One option is to employ smart sensor technology as an around the clock sentry along the inter-Korean border to replace soldiers.
The military plans to try out the unmanned detection and defense system in May at a military camp outside the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ).