Is it a chicken? Yes, really. After US President Donald Trump and North Korean chief Kim Jong-un met at the DMZ, South Korea scrambled jets to intercept an “unidentified object,” which turned out to be a flock of birds.
With the impromptu meeting between Trump and Kim being described in the media as each “historic” and a “photo-op,” South Korea’s army was on excessive alert once more on Monday morning, as radars picked up “traces of flight by an unidentified object” heading south throughout the demarcation line, the South’s Yonhap information company reported.
Media stories mentioned that fighter jets had been launched to intercept the object, which bore an identical radar signature to a helicopter. Though the South Korean army didn’t say what belongings it launched to intercept the object, it did later admit that it had been a false alarm brought on by a flock of birds.
The Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) – a strip of no-man’s land two and a half miles (4km) broad – has separated North and South Korea since the Korean War was paused by an armistice settlement in 1953. Watched over by guard towers and suffering from an estimated two million landmines, the space is inhospitable to human life, however ideally suited for birds.
According to the DMZ Ecology Research Institute,159 species of birds name the strip their home, together with many protected or endangered species. The space is so teeming with chicken life that birdwatching excursions usually depart for the DMZ from the South Korean capital of Seoul.
President Trump made historical past on Sunday by changing into the first sitting US president to step throughout the border and enter North Korea, at Kim’s invitation. The pair sat down to a temporary meeting, and although no definitive steps in direction of peace or denuclearization had been introduced, Trump tentatively invited Kim for talks at the White House, “at some point.”
