According to military officials on April 16, as soon as late April, the MND will hold a military facility protection zone examination committee meeting with the vice minister of defense as chairman, and recommend to the minister of defense to set the area around Daechu-ri as a military facility protection zone.

If the minister of defense approves the recommendation, the concerned area will be set aside as a military facility protection zone. Consequently, military forces and equipment will be allowed to be deployed there, and the MND will be able to directly control the land.

It has been reported that after setting the area around Daechu-ri as a protection zone, in order to prevent civilian access, the MND will mobilize engineer equipment and soldiers and start the job of building a barbed wire fence that will surround all 25km around the protection zone.

Such plans of the MND come as a result of its failure to halt the illegal farming activities of local residents and “Pyeongtaek USFK Base Expansion Opposition Committee” members. To stop the move, it tried to close down irrigation canals in two separate occasions: once on March 15 and another on April 7.

The MND used about 700 employees of a private company on April 7 and closed down two irrigation canals that provided farming water to field around K-6 (Camp Humphrey) by filling them up with concrete, but local residents used excavators and restored the canals in only four days.

It also seems that Gyeonggi Police Commissioner Eoh Chung-soo’s statement that he could not accept MND’s request for security forces, since the planned base relocation area is not a military facility protection zone, played a role in the decision of military authorities.

According to Military Facility Protection Zone Law, if the minister of defense requests to police for security forces, the police must cooperate with such request.

The third article of Military Facility Protection Zone Law stipulates that areas required for the facilitation of military operations, and for the protection of military facilities or the safety of local residents are set as restricted protection zones.

According to military authorities, when set as a military facility protection zone, the exertion of property rights as well as the reconstruction or additional construction of local residents becomes strictly controlled, and military guards will be deployed in order to restrict the access of civilians,