SKorea vows retaliation if North attacks again

[99socks Profile]

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 radio 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."

Lee urged South Koreans to be more united on national security because North Korea tries to take advantage of any divisions in public opinions in the South.

"There can be no difference between you and me when it comes to national security because our lives and the survival of the nation depend on it," he said. "They always have their eyes open to take advantage of any opportunity if they detect any divisiveness in our minds and thoughts."

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 since its Nov. 23 artillery bombardment. The South also has threatened airstrikes if hit again, ordered more troops on front-line islands and is pushing for upgraded rules of engagement to allow for a more forceful response to future provocations.

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.

The North's main newspaper issued a warning Monday that South Korea's recent exercises are "reckless military provocation" that could lead to the South to face a self-destruction. "There is limit in our patience," said the Redoing Sinmun commentary carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.

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.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/as_koreas_clash

[Otoel Profile]

[Glenn Profile]

More proxy wars perhaps.

China backing the North, and America backing the South, to what end.

Don't forget the Russian - Chinese pact.....Russia backs Iran to the hilt, and China backs North Korea, so they're already in confrontation with "the west".

Are the big boys willing to sacrifice the puny powers to get at each other, will the nukes first get used on these irritating upstarts, then escalate to engulf the rest of us.

[99socks Profile]

What's North Korea's next move? Perhaps a nuclear weapons test.


(December 24th, 2010)

Seoul

North Korea appears more likely now to stage another long-range missile test or underground nuclear explosion rather than attacking South Korean targets, according to security experts in South Korea.

"They’re not going to do anything immediately,” says Lee Jong-min, dean of Yonsei University’s Graduate School of International Studies, “but I’m fairly convinced they’ll conduct another nuclear test maybe early next year.”

In crises stretching back to nuclear negotiations in the early 1990s, North Korea has put the Korean Peninsula into crisis mode before eventually coming to the table. While the US, South Korea, and Japan say they oppose a return to six-party talks, last held in Beijing in December 2008, another nuclear test or additional missile strikes – on the heels of the North's recent attacks – might be the North's way of forcing new negotiations.

“I don’t think there’s anything stopping North Korea now from going ahead with another nuclear test,” says Mingi Hyun, a research fellow at the Korea Institute for Maritime Strategy. Neither South Korea nor the US, he says, “have given North Korea any reason to hold off” despite military exercises on land and sea since the deadly Nov. 23 North Korean attack on a South Korean island.

An influential South Korean think tank, the Institute of Foreign Affairs and National Security (IFANS), came out with a report Friday suggesting “a possibility of North Korea carrying out its third nuclear test” for at least two reasons.

IFANS says the North wants “to seek improvement in its nuclear weapons production capability” and “keep military tension high” while promoting the status of leader Kim Jong-il's youngest son, Kim Jong-un, as the North’s next leader.

Analysts have been forecasting a nuclear test next spring ever since American physicist Siegfried Hecker led a delegation to North Korea in October and toured a uranium-enrichment facility at the North’s nuclear complex at Yongbyon, north of Pyongyang.

The facility represents a major step beyond North Korea’s ongoing program for manufacturing nuclear devices with plutonium at their core. In October 2006 and again in May 2009, the North exploded plutonium devices underground, making it the world’s ninth nuclear weapons state.

The North has yet to test a device made of highly enriched uranium, but is believed to be well on the way to acquiring the ability and the resources to do so. Intelligence analysts have said North Korea is working on its uranium enrichment program at several sites in addition to the one Mr. Hecker visited.

China may have dissuaded North Korea from responding to South Korean military exercises with another attack. Beijing has never condemned North Korea for either the Nov. 23 attack or the sinking in March of the South Korean navy corvette the Cheonan, killing 46 sailors, but has repeatedly called for “stability” on the Korean Peninsula.

One key reason for the North to hold off is that China’s President Hu Jintao is going to Washington in late January for a summit with President Obama. North Korea is bound to be a major topic.

“Everything will be summed up in Washington,” says Paik Hak-soon, a senior fellow and North Korean analyst at the Sejong Institute. “It will not be difficult for both countries to agree on the need to keep the Korean Peninsula and East Asia more stable. They will have to deal with the fundamental cause of instability.”

With those talks in mind, says Mr. Paik, North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-il would not want to risk making China, the North’s only real ally and the source of most of its food and fuel, “lose face.”

Moreover, he says, North Korea would like to return to six-party talks at which both its nuclear program and the topic of a peace treaty replacing the Korean War armistice would be on the agenda. North Korea, he says, has “gotten what it wants by these incidents” and can now argue forcefully for “a peace mechanism.”

Paik says that the Obama-Hu summit may bring about a change in the US policy of adamantly opposing a return to six-party talks. The position of both the US and South Korea is that North Korea must first take substantive steps to live up to 2007 agreements to abandon its entire nuclear program in return for a huge infusion of US aid.

Mr. Hyun at the maritime institute agrees that North Korea accomplished basic aims in its attacks. South Korea and the US, while staging large exercises, have not actually responded by attacking the North in return."

"You need the political will to use military force," he says, “but the [South Korean] government lacks the will.” In the meantime, he adds, “the issue has to be between North and South Korea directly” and not in multilateral talks.

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-Pac ... apons-test

[Glenn Profile]

China have a nice little agent provocateur in N.Korea, they'll do whatever their sugar daddy wants.

[99socks Profile]

China backing the North, and America backing the South, to what end.

Nay?

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/24/world ... tml?src=mv

[Glenn Profile]

Ahh.....the the third way....oh well, there's no oil and no strategic advantage for the US, so they're happy to sell out S.Korea.

I should have known better, what do the New York, Washington, Los Angeles axis do that's good.

[Will69ease Profile]

So what? They have been saying that for a month now.

[Ricohno Profile]

Russia and China have no int. in North Korea, China is dependent on continuing growth in Asia, Russia have the same worries as USA when it comes to North Korea. Regarding Iran, Russia is also in range of nuclear warheads from Iran if they r to develope nuclear warhead, its more of a question of how Russia can be a part of preventing Iran in developing nuclear warhead without making a fool of themself.
Int. point here is that for once USA might go to war against a country that has no natural resource og int. but i think its rather a question protecting their strongest allied in Asia wich they wont let go that easy.