SKorea vows retaliation if North attacks again

SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea's president vowed a relentless retaliation against North Korea if provoked again, saying Monday he is not afraid of a war with the communist North.

The two Koreas have ramped up their rhetoric since North Korea shelled front-line Yeonpyeong Island near the tense western sea border last month, killing four South Koreans. Both sides accuse each other of provoking first.

On Monday, President Lee Myung-bak used much of his regular address to vow to get tougher with any new provocation by North Korea.

"We have now been awakened to the realization that war can be prevented and peace assured only when such provocations are met with a strong response," Lee said. "Fear of war is never helpful in preventing war."

He said South Korea's military "must respond relentlessly when they come under attack."

South Korea has staged a series of military drills — including one on Yeonpyeong Island on Dec. 20 — in a show of force against the North. The South was to begin routine naval firing exercises starting Monday but not on Yeonpyeong and other border islands, according to the Defense Ministry.

North Korea, for its part, has also kept up rhetoric around last Friday's 19th anniversary of leader Kim Jong Il's appointment as the North's supreme military commander. Kim's military chief threatened last week to launch a "sacred" nuclear war against the South.

On Friday, North Korean soldiers appeared on a state TV program and bragged of participating in the artillery barrage on Yeonpyeong — the country's first attacks on a civilian area since the 1950-53 Korean War.

The two Koreas are still technically at war because their 1950s conflict ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty. In recent years, several bloody naval skirmishes occurred near their disputed western sea border — drawn by the U.N. at the close of the Korean War.

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North Korean Shelling Shatters Islanders' Illusion of Security

Like many of the 1,700 residents of Yeonpyeong island, Shin Seung Won had grown accustomed to the distant rumble of artillery fire by North and South Korea. This week, the tit-for-tat exercises took on a deadly reality.

“I’ve lived with the sound of shelling all my life,” said Shin, who runs a motel on the South Korean island, where the military conducts live-firing drills less than 20 kilometers (12.4 miles) away from North Korean troops. “I looked out the window after hearing a thundering sound and saw my neighbor’s house on fire,” Shin said in a telephone interview.

North Korea has sought to justify its Nov. 23 shelling of Yeonpyeong, the first such attack on South Korean soil in half a century, on what it termed “military provocation” in disputed waters. Two soldiers and two civilians died in the barrage, which triggered declines in global financial markets and drew international condemnation.

“The proximity of these islands to the western border makes North Korea feel like it’s constantly at gunpoint,” said Kim Yong Hyun, professor of North Korean studies at Dongguk University in Seoul. “The disputed area also gives North Korea an easy excuse for provocation to create havoc and so get the international community’s attention.”

The MSCI World index dropped as much as 2 percent on the day of the attack and the won fell more than 1 percent. President Barack Obama, South Korean President Lee Myung Bak and Japan’s Prime Minister Naoto Kan were among leaders who condemned Kim Jong Il’s regime. China’s Premier Wen Jiabao called for restraint without ascribing any blame to North Korea, a communist ally for the past 60 years.

Military Response

North Korea’s state-run news service yesterday said it urged the South to call off exercises in the area and warned of a military response to any infringement of its “inviolable territorial” waters. The U.S. sent the aircraft carrier USS George Washington for joint drills off South Korea’s western coast between Nov. 28 and Dec. 1. The exercises had been planned before the shelling and are “defensive in nature,” the U.S. forces in Seoul said in an e-mailed statement.

Yeonpyeong lies 2 1/2-hours by boat from the South Korean port of Incheon. The government resumed ferry services yesterday after evacuating many island residents following the attack. The island is situated about 2 miles from the western maritime border disputed by North Korea.

The sea border was demarcated by the United Nations after the 1950-1953 civil war and never accepted by the North. The area is rich in fishing, attracting boats from both Koreas and China during the crabbing season in May and June.

Naval Skirmishes

North and South Korea engaged in deadly naval skirmishes in 1999 and 2002 close to the island. The area was also where the South Korean warship Cheonan sank in March, killing 46 sailors. An international panel blamed a torpedo from a North Korean mini-submarine for the incident, a finding denied by Kim Jong Il’s regime and never accepted by China, his closest ally.

North Korea started firing artillery after the South Korean navy conducted its monthly live-fire exercises near the border. North Korea said it contacted the South at 8 a.m. on Nov. 23 to demand maneuvers be scrapped.

“Should the South Korean puppet group dare intrude into our territorial waters even 0.001 mm, our revolutionary armed forces will unhesitatingly continue taking merciless military counter-actions against it,” North Korea said in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency after the shelling.

Under fire from the North, South Korean Marines took 10 minutes to pinpoint their target before counter-attacking, Lieutenant-General Joo Jong Hwa told reporters on a tour of the island yesterday. There has been no information on possible North Korean casualties.

Artillery Exchange

“North Korea argues that we fired at them first, but this is the direction that we fired,” at earlier, Joo said, pointing southwest, away from the peninsula.

Lieutenant Kim Jung Soo said his company had been conducting firing drills until just before the North Korean barrage commenced. Two members of his team wore helmets that had been scorched by the shelling.

The North’s artillery attack set 22 houses ablaze and burned at least 3,300 square meters of mountainous area, South Korea’s Ministry of Public Administration and Security said on its website. At least 740 people were evacuated from the island, according to the ministry and Coast Guard.

Washing Dishes

Yu Kyung Soon, 53, said she was washing dishes in the elementary school cafeteria on the island when the windows suddenly shattered. Together with her female co-workers, she crawled on the floor seeking a place to hide.

When we emerged from the building “it was a sea of fire, with dark smoke everywhere,” Yu said in an interview at Incheon port yesterday. “I thought ‘this is war. This is the day that I will die.’”

The school’s 90 students were immediately ushered to a bomb shelter, she said.

“The kids were loud and excited, but none of them seemed to be really scared,” Yu said. “It was just minutes after we were joking how the North Koreans would never attack us first and target the capital instead."

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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-11-25/north-korean-shelling-shatters-islanders-illusion-of-security.html

North Korean attack on South Korean island leaves U.S. with few good options

North Korea's artillery attack on a South Korean island Tuesday, coupled with its choreographed rollout of a new nuclear program, has presented the United States with a massive strategic challenge in one of the most dangerous corners of the world.

The 50-minute barrage on the island of Yeonpyeong - which killed two South Korean marines, wounded at least 19 other people and set buildings and forests ablaze - marked the first time in years that North Korea has trained the firepower of its 1.1 million-strong military on South Korea's civilian population. It prompted a withering round of return fire from South Korean batteries, the scrambling of the South's air force and concerns that the firefight could spiral into all-out war.

Despite North Korean claims that the South fired the first shots during a round of military exercises, U.S. officials said the barrage appeared to have been unprovoked and premeditated.

They noted that the North began firing artillery four hours after the South's guns had fallen silent. Administration sources also said North Korean leader Kim Jong Il and his third son, the heir apparent Kim Jong Eun, visited troops over the weekend in the region where the barrage originated - apparently as a kind of pep rally.

Indeed, Tuesday's attack on the island off the western coast of the Korean Peninsula appears to have been just as scripted as the nuclear revelations, which Pyongyang has dribbled out in phases over the past month, culminating with the disclosure that it has a uranium-enrichment program. That development had already significantly complicated U.S.-led efforts to push North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons; in addition to its production of plutonium, the North now has a second way to make a bomb.

The United States, which is obligated by a treaty to defend the South, now faces few good options with regard to the North.

If it declines to hold talks with North Korea unless the government there agrees to give up its nuclear weapons - part of the Obama administration's policy of "strategic patience" - Pyongyang could escalate with more artillery barrages or with an attack on a South Korean warship, similar to the one it is accused of launching in March. The government could also conduct a third nuclear test, long rumored to be in the offing, or continue to hawk its nuclear-weapons technology abroad.

On the other hand, if the Obama administration is pulled into talks with the North Koreans, it won't be able to escape the appearance that it is caving in the face of pressure. And even if talks do resume, there is no guarantee that North Korea won't continue the provocations and attacks.

"We've had an underlying philosophy of not rewarding bad behavior with concessions," said a senior administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. "And that philosophy will continue to underline our next steps."

Still, without some form of renewed engagement, analysts such as Siegfried Hecker, the former director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory who was shown North Korea's uranium- enrichment program on Nov. 12, worry that North Korea will simply continue along its confrontational path. "You have to address the fundamentals of North Korean security," Hecker said.


For now the Obama administration's primary concern is the security of the South - and ensuring that the situation does not spin out of control.

President Obama learned of the attack at 3:55 a.m., according to a spokesman. U.S. Army Gen. Walter L. Sharp, commander of United Nations forces on the peninsula and the 28,000 American troops stationed there, was in constant touch with his South Korean counterparts after the attack.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/23/AR2010112307548_2.html