Obama to visit Korean Demilitarized Zone on Sunday

President Barack Obama on Sunday will make his first-ever visit to the most guarded border in the world—the Demilitarized Zone that separates North and South Korea—as he kicks off a brief trip to Seoul for a nuclear security summit, the White House announced Tuesday.

Obama's stop at the DMZ will allow him to showcase his "personal investment" in the 28,500 U.S. troops who serve in South Korea as well as America's "personal commitment" to South Korea's security, Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes told reporters on a conference call.

The National Security Council's senior director for Asia, Danny Russel, noted on the same call that the DMZ stop will come nearly two years to the day of the sinking of the South Korean navy ship Cheonan, which left 46 sailors dead. An international investigation blamed a North Korean torpedo for the incident. North Korea angrily denied the findings.

The joint U.S.-South Korea efforts to get to the bottom of the tragedy were "a special example of the solidarity and the cooperation" between the two allies, said Russel.

And the 160-mile long, 2.5-mile strip of land "is the front line of democracy" on the Korean Peninsula, he added.

Obama will be in South Korea for a summit focused on curbing the spread of nuclear weapons technology. While there, he will meet with leaders from Turkey, South Korea, Russia, Kazakhstan and China. But the visit also comes amid tensions over North Korea's announced plans to launch a long-range rocket in April—a step loudly condemned in Washington and among its allies in the region.

President George W. Bush visited the DMZ in February 2002—just weeks after calling North Korea part of an "axis of evil" with Iran and Saddam Hussein's Iraq—and gave a speech at a train station 200 yards from the fortified border.

Correction, 6:05 p.m.: This post has been updated to correct the date of the sinking of the Cheonan. The ship sank in 2010, not 2011.

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