OBAMA: U.S. REMAINS FIRMLY, FULLY COMMITTED TO DEFEND SOUTH KOREA
(PHOTO AT LEFT - People look over destroyed houses on Yeonpyeong Island, South Korea, Wednesday. North and South Korea exchanged artillery fire Tuesday after the North shelled an island near their disputed sea border, killing at least two South Korean marines, setting dozens of buildings ablaze and sending civilians fleeing for shelter.)
INCHEON, SOUTH KOREA (AP), NOVEMBER 29, 2010 (MSNBC) President Barack Obama and his South Korean counterpart Lee Myung-bak agreed to hold more joint military exercises in response to North Korea's artillery attack on a South Korean island on Tuesday.
Obama told Lee in a telephone call that the "United States remains firmly and fully committed to the defense of its ally the Republic of Korea," the White House said in a statement.
The joint military exercises "in the days ahead" would underscore the close security cooperation between the two countries, the statement said.
Obama, strongly condemning the attack, told Lee that North Korea must stop its provocative actions, which will only lead to further isolation, and fully abide by the terms of the Armistice Agreement and its obligations under international law.
The call capped a day in which international diplomats scrambled to defuse tensions in the Koreas after North Korea bombarded the South Korean island with artillery shells, killing at least two people.
Obama earlier pledged the United States would defend Seoul from aggression by its communist neighbor.
Yet with its options limited, the U.S. sought a diplomatic rather a military response to one of those most ominous clashes between the Koreas in decades.
"South Korea is our ally. It has been since the Korean War," Obama said. "And we strongly affirm our commitment to defend South Korea as part of that alliance."
The president, speaking to ABC News, would not speculate when asked about military options.
Obama called North Korea an "ongoing threat that has to be dealt with" and reiterated that South Korea is "one of our most important allies" and "a cornerstone of U.S. security in the Pacific region."
The nuclear-powered USS George Washington aircraft carrier (photo at left), which carries 75 warplanes and has a crew of over 6,000, left Yokosuka U.S. Naval Base south of Tokyo on Wednesday morning. The U.S. Seventh Fleet said its departure had already been scheduled. The ship will join South Korean naval forces in the waters west of the Korean peninsula from Nov. 28 to Dec. 1 to conduct air defense and surface warfare readiness training.
Earlier, South Korea warned the North of "enormous retaliation" if it took more aggressive steps after Pyongyang fired scores of artillery shells at the island of Yeonpyeong. It was one of the most serious attacks by the North on its neighbor since the Korean War ended in 1953.
The South fired back after Tuesday's attack and sent fighter jets to the area, close to a disputed maritime border on the west of the divided Korean peninsula and the scene of deadly clashes between the two rivals in the past.
South Korea was conducting military drills in the area at the time but said it had not been firing at the North. Pyongyang blamed Seoul for starting the fight, which killed at least two South Korean marines and wounded at least 15 other troops along with three civilians and razed scores of houses on the island of Yeonpyeong.
The extent of casualties on the northern side was unknown but officials in Seoul said they could be considerable.
Calling the incident "an invasion of South Korean territory," Lee warned that future provocations could be met with a strong response, although there was no indication of immediate retaliation.
"I think enormous retaliation is going to be necessary to make North Korea incapable of provoking us again," Lee told reporters during a visit to military headquarters in Seoul.
The United States has more than 28,000 troops in South Korea. Pentagon officials said none of them were involved in the military drills that preceded the bombardment.
The incident followed revelations over the weekend that Pyongyang is fast developing another source of material to make atomic bombs, and analysts said the North may again be pursuing a strategy of calculated provocations to wrest diplomatic and economic concessions from the international community.
"Despite our repeated warnings, South Korea fired dozens of shells from 1 p.m. ... and we've taken strong military action immediately," its KCNA news agency said.
North Korea said it was merely "reacting to the military provocation of the puppet group with a prompt powerful physical strike," and accused Seoul of starting the skirmish with its "reckless military provocation as firing dozens of shells inside the territorial waters of the" North.
The supreme military command in Pyongyang threatened more strikes if the South crossed their maritime border by "even 0.001 millimeter," according to KCNA.
South Korean officials said the skirmish began when Pyongyang warned the South to halt military drills in the area.
When Seoul refused and began firing artillery into disputed waters, albeit away from the North Korean shore, the North retaliated by bombarding the small island of Yeonpyeong, which houses South Korean military installations and a small civilian population.
When Seoul refused and began firing artillery into disputed waters — but away from the North Korean shore — the North retaliated by shelling the small island of Yeonpyeong, which houses South Korean military installations and a small civilian population.
South Korea responded by firing K-9 155 mm self-propelled howitzers, but a South Korean official declined to say whether North Korean territory was hit. The entire clash lasted more than an hour, NBC News reported.
Sources told NBC that the North fired the first salvo of artillery shells at the island four hours after the South's "live-fire" artillery training exercise. South Korea returned fire almost immediately. For more than an hour, the two sides exchanged salvos — the North Koreans fired about 70 artillery shells, the South fired about 80. South Korea's military indicated it inflicted heavy casualties on the North, but the claim could not be independently verified.
Senior U.S. military commanders in South Korea have been temporarily put on a 24-hour operational alert, essentially meaning they man their commands around-the-clock. The rest of U.S. military forces have not been placed on alert, and the overall threat level against U.S. forces has not been raised, according to NBC News. In addition, senior military officials told NBC News that no U.S. service members, equipment, weapons, ships or planes have been ordered to reposition themselves inside South Korea, and no additional forces are headed to the region.
'Brink of war
(PHOTO AT RIGHT- SOUTH KOREAN DESTROYER)
The exchange represents a sharp escalation of the skirmishes that flare up along the disputed border from time to time. It also comes amid high tensions over the North's apparent progress in its quest for nuclear weapons — Pyongyang claims it has a new uranium enrichment facility — and six weeks after North Korean leader Kim Jong Il anointed his youngest son, Kim Jong Un, as the heir apparent.
"It brings us one step closer to the brink of war," said Peter Beck, a research fellow with the Council on Foreign Relations, "because I don't think the North would seek war by intention, but war by accident, something spiraling out of control has always been my fear."
The two Koreas are still technically at war — the Korean War ended only with a truce and North Korea does not recognize the maritime border that was unilaterally drawn by the United Nations at the end of the 1950-1953 conflict. Tension also rose sharply early this year after Seoul accused the North of torpedoing one of its navy vessels, killing 46 sailors.
'Frightened to death'
"I thought I would die," said Lee Chun-ok, 54, an islander who said she was watching TV in her home when the shelling began. Suddenly, a wall and door collapsed. "I was really, really terrified," she told The Associated Press after being evacuated to the port city of Incheon, west of Seoul, "and I'm still terrified."
YTN television said dozens of houses caught fire on Yeonpyeong, which is about 75 miles west of the capital Seoul near the disputed maritime border. It is a mere seven miles from — and within sight of — the North Korean mainland.
US, SOUTH KOREA LAUNCHED WAR GAMES AT TENSE YELLOW SEA
(PHOTO - AP – This image provided by the U.S. Navy shows a Marine Corps C-130 Hercules leads a formation of F/A-18C)
SOUTH KOREA, (PHILSTAR) A US supercarrier and South Korean destroyer took up position in the tense Yellow Sea on yesterday for joint military exercises that were a united show of force just days after a deadly North Korean artillery attack.
As tensions escalated across the region, with North Korea threatening another "merciless" attack, China belatedly jumped into the fray. Beijing's top nuclear envoy, Wu Dawei, called for an emergency meeting in early December among regional powers involved in nuclear disarmament talks, including North Korea.
Seoul responded cautiously to the proposal from North Korea's staunch ally, saying it should be "reviewed very carefully" in light of North Korea's recent revelation of a new uranium-enrichment facility, even as protesters begged President Lee Myung-bak to find a way to resolve the tension and restore peace.
The troubled relations between the two Koreas, which fought a three-year war in the 1950s, have steadily deteriorated since Lee's conservative government took power in 2008 with a tough new policy toward nuclear-armed North Korea.
Eight months ago, a South Korean warship went down in the western waters, killing 46 sailors in the worst attack on the South Korean military since the Korean War. Then, last Tuesday, North Korean troops showered artillery on Yeonpyeong, a South Korean-held island that houses military bases as well as a civilian population of 1,300 — an attack that marked a new level of hostility.
Two South Korean marines and two civilians were killed and 18 others wounded in the hailstorm of artillery that sent residents fleeing into bunkers and reduced homes on the island to charred rubble.
North Korea blamed the South for provoking the attack by holding artillery drills near the Koreas' maritime border, and has threatened to be "merciless" if the current war games — set to last until Dec. 1 — get too close to its territory.
As US and South Korean ships, including the nuclear-powered USS George Washington, sailed into the waters off Korea's west coast yesterday, China began launching its diplomatic bid to calm tensions.
Washington and Seoul had been pressing China, North Korea's main ally and benefactor, to help defuse the situation amid fears of all-out war.
China, slow at first to react, has quickened its diplomatic intervention in recent days. Chinese state councilor Dai Bingguo made a last-minute visit to Seoul to confer with Lee.
Lee pressured China to contribute to peace in a "more objective, responsible" matter, and warned yesterday that Seoul would respond "strongly" to any further provocation, the presidential office said.
The strong words were Lee's first public comment in days. He was due to address the nation Monday morning amid calls from his people to take stronger action in dealing with the defiant North.
Appearing yesterday CNN's "State of the Union" yesterday, US Sen. John McCain, the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said China should rein in its neighbor.
"The key to this, obviously, is China," McCain said. "And, unfortunately, China is not behaving as a responsible world power. It cannot be in China's long-term interest to see a renewed conflict on the Korean peninsula."
North Korea has walked a path of defiance since launching a rocket in April 2009 in violation of UN Security Council resolutions and abandoning the disarmament process in protest against the condemnation that followed.
However, in recent months Pyongyang has shown an eagerness to get back to the talks, and has appeared increasingly frustrated by US and South Korean reluctance to restart the negotiations.
Seoul has said it wants an acknowledgment of regret for the sinking of the Cheonan warship in March as well as a concrete show of commitment to denuclearization.
North Korea, which cites the US military presence in South Korea as a main reason behind its drive to build atomic weapons, routinely calls the joint exercises between the allies a rehearsal for war.
Washington, which keeps 28,500 troops in South Korea to protect the ally, insists the routine drills were planned before last Tuesday's attack.
The exercises will take place over four days, but no live-fire drills are planned, said Cmdr. Jeff Davis, spokesman for the 7th Fleet in Japan.
Along scenic Mallipo Beach on the west coast, about 50 South Korean soldiers were laying down an aluminum road to prepare for an amphibious landing drill Monday. Barbed wire and metal staves ran the length of the beach for about 2 miles (3 kilometers). Military ships hovered in the distance.
North Korea expressed renewed outrage over the Yellow Sea drills.
The war games are a "pretext for aggression and ignite a war at any cost," the National Peace Committee of Korea said in a statement carried yesterday by the official Korean Central News Agency.
Hours earlier, the rattle of new artillery fire from North Korea sent residents, journalists, police and troops scrambling for cover on Yeonpyeong Island. None of the rounds landed on the island, military officials said, but the incident showed how tense the situation remains.
Saying they could not guarantee the journalists' safety, South Korea's Defense Ministry sent a ship to ferry them off the island but bad weather forced them to cancel the evacuation. About 380 people, including 28 islanders and 190 journalists, remained on Yeonpyeong on yesterday, officials said.
A similar burst of artillery fire Friday occurred just as the US military's top commander in the region, Gen. Walter Sharp, was touring Yeonpyeong Island. No shells landed anywhere in South Korean territory.
Calls for tougher action made way yesterday for pleas for peace among about 150 South Koreans who turned out for a vigil yesterday evening in a Seoul plaza, huddling with candles in paper cups and chanting, "Give us peace!"
"It was very shocking," said Kang Hong-koo, 22, a student. "I'm here to appease the souls of the people who were killed in the North Korean attack. I hope the current tense situation is alleviated quickly."
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