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| China-Japan-Koreas | |
| North Korea to Sever Ties With the South | |
| 2010-05-25 | |
| SEOUL—North Korea said Tuesday it will cut off all ties to South Korea, going well beyond the penalties that Seoul imposed on it a day earlier for its apparent role in the sinking of a South Korean warship two months ago. The statement came several hours after North Korean accused South Korea of sending warships into its territorial waters, a claim the South immediately denied. North Korea's state news agency announced the move late Tuesday, well after the usual hours when it makes statements from the country's authoritarian government. The decision sharply escalates the tensions between the two countries in the aftermath of the March 26 sinking of South Korea's Cheonan warship. North Korea said it would expel all South Koreans from a joint industrial complex just inside the North where about 120 South Korean companies employ about 40,000 North Koreans.
North Korea also said it would ban South Korean ships and planes from its territorial waters and airspace, though that step means little since South Korean planes avoid the country and only ships involved in commerce with the North travel there. North Korea's state media said "dozens" of South Korea warships crossed the inter-Korean maritime border in the Yellow Sea over the past 10 days. The area, near where the South Korean patrol boat Cheonan sank on March 26, has long been disputed by North Korea. The statement showed that Pyongyang is intensely focused on the Yellow Sea boundary as part of its broader effort to secure money and security for its authoritarian government. As part of that effort, North Korea for two years has been trying to get South Korea to reverse its stance of linking aid to the North with nuclear disarmament. The maritime boundary is an area where North Korea can irritate the South Korean military and government without risk of involving many people and a wide conflict. And it's a place where Pyongyang feels economically constrained. On portions of its west coast, North Korean fishing vessels can only go out about five miles before reaching the inter-Korean border, limiting their ability to fish. In the announcement, North Korea warned of further, unspecified military action in the Yellow Sea. It didn't refer to the Cheonan sinking in the announcement. Through the years, North Korean military vessels have accompanied fishing boats around the sea border. Last year, North Korea built a rocket base on land that's capable of firing artillery into the border waters. It test-fired several hundred rounds of artillery from the new base in January. Earlier Tuesday, a defector group in Seoul said that North Korean officials told the country's citizens last week to prepare for confrontation with the South. The order was given on a closed-circuit cable radio system that is maintained by the government and is difficult for outsiders to monitor, said Hyun In-hye of the defector group North Korea Intellectual Solidarity. He said the group is in regular phone contact with people in North Korea. The North's authoritarian government has long told North Koreans that the country is at risk of invasion from South Korea, the U.S. and Japan. But last week's message said the South may use the Cheonan incident as a pretense for war, Ms. Hyun said. | |
| Posted by: |
| #6 Hey, it worked for Pakistan. Kill a bunch of "westerners" and get billions of $ in aid in return. |
| Posted by: ed 2010-05-25 22:57 |
| #5 ION TOPIX > NORTH KOREA THREATENS MILITARY ACTION/NAVAL FIGHT, iff SOKOR violates it Waters. and * SAME > SEOUL ON ALERT AS NK SUBS [4 ea. 300-Tonne]DISAPPEAR INTO EAST SEA, from their DPRK Chano NavBase for TWO DAYS + STILL COUNTING. |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2010-05-25 22:42 |
| #4 "I would be cancelling any and all leaves, pushing for emergency ramp-ups on weapons and munition deliveries, and calling "unscheduled practice deployments" of all armor, artillery, and infantry OUT of their respective homebases, immediately." - Shieldwolf isn't that what's happening...? artillery have been put on high alert and deployed - so has the navel border patrols - just because they are not printing deployment conditions in the blogs, does not mean it is not on the ready |
| Posted by: linker 2010-05-25 22:39 |
| #3 If I was in the SoKorean Pentagon, I would be cancelling any and all leaves, pushing for emergency ramp-ups on weapons and munition deliveries, and calling "unscheduled practice deployments" of all armor, artillery, and infantry OUT of their respective homebases, immediately. |
| Posted by: Shieldwolf 2010-05-25 19:41 |
| #2 So we reap the fruits of the SKor Sunshine Policy (sucking up NKor in public and sending the NKor VIPs lots of money as bribes/humanitanian assistance). The guy who initiated the Sunshine Policy in the late Clinton era was SKor Prez, Kim Dae Jung. He leveraged this into a Nobel Peace Prize. Then, in the early W years, Roh Moo-hyun was elected on a 'lets do more Sunshine' promise. Lee Myung-bak took office in 2009 and reduced the bribes (he said he ended them but there were probably different people being bribed for less money). |
| Posted by: lord garth 2010-05-25 17:30 |
| #1 [NKor] Our torpedo was trundling along, minding its own business, and they put a ship in its way. That sort of provocation cannot be allowed to stand. No juche for you! [/NKor] |
| Posted by: Mike 2010-05-25 16:38 |