Biden visits DMZ and observes North Korean side of border

US Vice President Joe Biden on Saturday visited the Demilitarised Zone (DMZ) separating South Korea from the North, a visit that was likely to cast attention on global concerns about North Korea's nuclear programme. Biden met with soldiers at the US military's Camp Bonifas near the South-North border, in Paju, and went to Observation Post Ouellette, one of 77 guard posts that line the South Korean side of the border. He then stopped further down the road at Freedom House, an administrative building in the southern sector of Panmunjom, which lies inside the 2.5-mile-wide Demilitarised Zone that separates the two Koreas. The visit, which took place on the last day of a long-planned trip to South Korea, came just hours after North Korea freed Merrill Newman, an elderly US veteran of the Korean War after a weekslong detention. Biden welcomed the release and called Newman shortly after the 85-year-old landed in Beijing from North Korea, where he had been detained for more than a month. North Korean authorities had pulled Newman off a plane while he was touring the country six decades after the war. Biden said he had "played no direct role" in securing Newman's release and offered no thoughts on why the North decided to release him. The North's official Korean Central News Agency said Pyongyang made the decision because the Newman had apologised for his alleged crimes during the Korean War and because of his age and medical condition. Biden told the released American that the US must also work to secure the release of Kenneth Bae, another US citizen in Pyongyang's custody, Biden's office said. Tension remains on the Korean Peninsula, though Pyongyang's angry rhetoric against the US and South Korea has toned down compared with its torrent of springtime threats to launch nuclear strikes and restart nuclear bomb fuel production. You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/youtube/bd3e868db1280a8499941b8abfbe4f24 Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork