Bloomberg
by Jungmin Hong
North Korea said South Korea is pushing tensions on the peninsula to an “uncontrollable extreme phase” by holding military exercises with the U.S. and staging a live-firing drill by naval artillery tomorrow.
South Korea “is so hell-bent on the moves to escalate the confrontation and start a war that it is recklessly behaving bereft of reason,” the state-run Korea Central News Agency said in a commentary today. North Korea is “maintaining a maximum self-possession and self-control,” it said.
The drills starting tomorrow will include live firing from ships into seas near Daecheong Island, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said last week. North Korea said today shells will land in its territorial waters.
Tensions on the Korean Peninsula have increased since North Korea’s Nov. 23 shelling of South Korea’s Yeonpyeong island that killed two soldiers and two civilians. South Korea’s new defense minister, Kim Kwan Jin, two days ago vowed retaliation that would include airstrikes if North Korea made another attack.
“I will mobilize all combat capabilities available to severely punish the enemy,” Kim, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at his confirmation hearing on Dec. 3. “I will surely use planes. This is a matter of self-defense.” KCNA said today that North Korea denounced the minister’s comments.
Areas to Avoid
The South Korean government warned ships to avoid 29 areas around its coast before tomorrow’s drill. One zone lies about 7 miles (11 kilometers) off Daecheong, in waters claimed by North Korea that are about 100 miles (160 kilometers) from the South Korean mainland.
The area lies to the southwest of the island, in the opposite direction to the North Korean coastline, a spokesman for South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said last week.
North Korea fired artillery at the fishing community and military outpost of Yeonpyeong in the first shelling of South Korean soil since the 1950-1953 war. North Korea said it was responding to a military provocation after South Korea fired into waters each country claims as its own.
The incident was “deserved punishment” for South Korea’s shelling, KCNA said today.
North Korea yesterday denounced the U.S., South Korea and Japan for “reckless moves” to create a military alliance that threatens peace in North Asia.
“The situation on the Korean Peninsula is getting tenser as the days go by and the danger of a war is increasing hour by hour,” the KCNA reported, citing a commentary in the Rodong newspaper. ‘The U.S. is giving spurs to an arms buildup and preparations for a war.”
Navy Exercises
The U.S. sent the USS George Washington to join South Korean naval forces in an exercise in the Yellow Sea at the end of November and the aircraft carrier is now taking part in drills with Japan involving about 400 aircraft and 60 warships. More than 40,000 Japanese and U.S. military personnel began a weeklong exercise on Dec. 3.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will host Japan’s Foreign Minister Seiji Maehara and South Korean counterpart Kim Sung Hwan tomorrow to discuss regional security.
“Just as the U.S. has NATO in Europe, it is in the process of establishing a war structure of an ‘anti-Communist crusade’ called the U.S.-Japan-South Korea tripartite military alliance in Northeast Asia,” KCNA cited the Rodong commentary as saying. Joint actions such as defense studies and military exercises have become frequent between the three nations, it said.
No Link
The Japan-U.S. military exercise has no link to any “existing or perceived political or geographical situation nor is it directed at any nation,” U.S. Lieutenant Colonel Kenneth Hoffman, an Air Force spokesman, said in an e-mailed message.
China last week criticized the exercise as an obstacle to easing tensions that have risen on the peninsula since the March sinking of the South Korean warship Cheonan. An international panel blamed the incident on a North Korean torpedo, which Kim Jong Il’s regime has denied.
Japan and the U.S. joined South Korea in condemning North Korea’s shelling of Yeonpyeong, rejecting China’s call for talks with North Korea and calling on the government in Beijing to do more to rein in its ally.
China has “much influence and therefore much responsibility,” Admiral Michael Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at a forum of the Center for American Progress in Washington Dec. 1. “We need China to step up.”
Chinese opposition has stalled United Nations Security Council negotiations condemning the shelling and North Korea’s expanding nuclear program.
China on Nov. 28 proposed “emergency consultations” with negotiators from the two Koreas, Japan, Russia and the U.S. to defuse tensions. Talks among the six countries aimed at getting North Korea to abandon its nuclear program stalled in April 2009.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-12-04/north-korea-condemns-u-s-japan-south-korea-military-alliance.html