North and South Korea Exchange Fire, Killing Two
By MARK McDONALD
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/24/wo...gewanted=print
SEOUL, South Korea — North and South Korea exchanged artillery fire on Tuesday after dozens of shells fired from the North struck a South Korean island near the countries’ disputed maritime border, South Korean military officials said. Two South Korean soldiers were killed, 15 were wounded and three civilians were injured, said Kiyheon Kwon, an official at the Defense Ministry.
The South Korean military went to “crisis status,” and fighter planes were put on alert but did not take off.
South Korean artillery units returned fire after the North’s shells struck South Korea’s Yeonpyeong Island at 2:34 p.m., said Mr. Kwon, adding that the North also fired numerous rounds into the Yellow Sea. Television footage showed large plumes of black smoke spiraling from the island, and news reports said dozens of houses were on fire.
The official North Korean news agency said in a brief statement Tuesday night that the South had started the fight when it “recklessly fired into our sea area.”
The South Korean deputy minister of defense, Lee Yong-geul, acknowledged that artillery units had been firing test shots on Tuesday afternoon close to the North Korean coast, from a battery on the South Korean island of Paeknyeongdo. But he denied Pyongyang’s charge that the shots had crossed the sea border.While skirmishes between the two countries have not been uncommon in recent years, the clash appeared to have been the most serious in decades and came amid heightened tensions over the North’s nuclear program. An American nuclear scientist who recently visited the North said he had been shown a secret and modern enrichment facility.
A spokesman for President Lee Myung-bak said Mr. Lee gathered his security-related ministers and senior aides at a crisis meeting in the underground situation room at the Blue House, the presidential office and residence.
“We will not in any way tolerate this,” Mr. Lee’s chief spokesman, Hong Sang-pyo, said after the meeting. “Any further provocation will get an immediate and strong response and the South Korean military will strongly retaliate if there is anything further.”
The United States condemned the attack and called on North Korea to “halt its belligerent action,” the White House said in a statement.
The attack on the island came as 70,000 South Korean troops were beginning an annual nationwide military drill called Safeguarding the Nation. The exercise has been sharply criticized by Pyongyang as “simulating an invasion of the North” and “a means to provoke a war.” The drill includes some United States forces, but a defense official said no American military personnel were on the island when it was hit.
A spokeswoman for the Unification Ministry in Seoul said Tuesday night that the South Korean Red Cross had indefinitely postponed a Thursday meeting with North Korean officials on further reunions between family members separated since the Korean War. She also said the ministry was “reviewing the security situation” for several hundred South Korean workers at the Kaesong Industrial Park, a jointly operated facility in North Korea.
The shelling also followed revelations of two new nuclear facilities in the North — a light water reactor under construction and a modern plant for enriching uranium that Pyongyang says is operational.
Yeonpyeong Island sits just two miles from the Northern Limit Line, the disputed sea border which the North does not recognize, and only eight miles from the North Korean coast. The island houses a garrison of about 1,000 South Korean marines, and the navy has deployed its newest class of “patrol killer” guided-missile ships in the Western Sea, as the Yellow Sea is also known.
About 1,600 civilians also live on the island, mostly fishermen, and local news reports said by late afternoon that some residents had fled the island on fishing boats.
In March, a South Korean naval vessel, the Cheonan, was sunk in the area and 46 sailors died. The incident badly frayed inter-Korean relations and Seoul blamed the sinking on a North Korean torpedo attack. The North has denied any role in incident.
In August, North Korea fired 110 artillery rounds near Yeonpyeong and another South Korean island, the Office of Joint Chiefs of Staff in Seoul said at the time.
Three weeks ago, the South Korean Navy fired warning shots at a North Korean fishing boat after the vessel strayed across the Northern Limit Line. The North Korean boat then reportedly retreated.
Previous naval skirmishes occurred in the western sea in 1999 and 2002.
Reaction from governments involved in the six-party talks to the escalation of violence was swift.
The Russian Foreign Ministry urged restraint and a non-military resolution, while the British Foreign Secretary William Hague condemned the “unprovoked attack” and urged Pyongyang to refrain from hostilities.
Chinese officials said they were “concerned” and called on both sides to resume six-party talks. “We hope the relevant the parties will do more to contribute to the peace and stability of the Korean peninsula,” a Foreign Ministry spokesman, Hong Lei, said at a regular briefing in Beijing.
Officials gave the impression, however, that China was in the dark about the attacks. “The situation needs to be verified,” Mr. Hong said, adding that “China is willing to stay close communication with the relevant parties concerning the Korean nuclear issue.”
The Japanese government called North Korea's actions "unforgivable," Reuters reported.
The shelling came just days after an American nuclear scientist who visited North Korea earlier this month said he had been shown a vast new facility built secretly and rapidly to enrich uranium.
The scientist, Siegfried S. Hecker, a Stanford professor who previously directed the Los Alamos National Laboratory, said in an interview that he had been “stunned” by the sophistication of the new plant, where he saw “hundreds and hundreds” of centrifuges that had just been installed in a recently gutted building and operated from what he called “an ultra-modern control room.” The North Koreans claimed 2,000 centrifuges were already installed and running, he said.
The development confronted the Obama administration with the prospect that North Korea country is preparing to expand its nuclear arsenal or build a far more powerful type of atomic bomb.
Whether the calculated revelation is a negotiating ploy by North Korea or a signal that it plans to accelerate its weapons program even as it goes through a perilous leadership change, it creates a new challenge for President Obama at a moment when his program for gradual, global nuclear disarmament appears imperiled at home and abroad.
Analysts were quick to see the shelling as a deliberate North Korean provocation.
“Deliberate, yes, and it’s a sign of North Korea’s increasing frustration,” said Choi Jin-wook, a North Korea expert at the Korea Institute for National Unification, a research institute in Seoul.
“Washington has turned a deaf ear to Pyongyang and North Korea is saying, “Look here. We’re still alive. We can cause trouble. You can’t ignore us.”
Mr. Choi said North Korea had become frustrated over the Obama administration’s refusal to remove a broad range of sanctions against the regime for its continuing nuclear efforts.
“They see that they can’t pressure Washington,” he said, “so they’ve taken South Korea hostage again.”
Mr. Choi said North Korea’s first and most urgent priority is for food aid, which has been largely denied by South Korea and strangled by international and United States sanctions.
“They’re in a desperate situation and they want food immediately, not next year,” he said.
“I can’t think of recent event in the past five or 10 years that approaches this magnitude,” said John Swenson-Wright, an expert with the Royal Institute for International Affairs, also known as Chatham House, a private policy organization in London. “Symbolically and practically, this is a serious escalation in provocation,” he said in a telephone interview.
Tuesday’s exchange is the sharpest clash since the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il, in September positioned his youngest son, Kim Jong-un, as his successor to lead the secretive nation. The younger Mr. Kim was promoted on Sept. 28 to the rank of four-star general, a prerequisite for his ascendancy to power. The elder Mr. Kim, who is said to be in poor health after apparently suffering a stroke in 2008, has hurried the succession of Kim Jong-un in recent weeks.
But he Mr. Choi did not see Kim Jong-un’s hand in Tuesday’s attack.
“He is probably not part of this,” he said. “This is not a game for young boys.”
Other members of the Kim family and the leader’s inner circle also received new posts and promotions as the leadership hierarchy was reshuffled to provide Kim Jong-un with mentors and supporters as he solidifies his power.
Su-hyun Lee contributed reporting from Seoul, Kevin Drew from Hong Kong, Alan Cowell from Paris, Ian Johnson from Beijing, and Clifford J. Levy from Moscow.
North Korean dictator-in-waiting orders deadly artillery attack
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