/ 17 January 2009

S Korea on alert after N Korea border threat

South Korea’s armed forces ordered a border alert on Saturday after North Korea’s military threatened an “all-out confrontational posture” against Seoul.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff ordered an intensified guard by the army, navy and air force and called for increased reconnaissance flights by spy planes, a spokesperson for the joint chiefs told said.

President Lee Myung-Bak was briefed at an emergency meeting on the North’s statement, officials were quoted by Yonhap news agency as saying.

The North’s strongly worded military statement heightened tensions along the inter-Korean frontier and raised fears of clashes along the disputed border in the Yellow Sea.

It came just hours after the Foreign Ministry in Pyongyang said the North may not surrender its nuclear weapons even if diplomatic ties with Washington are established.

A spokesperson for the North’s army warned it would not allow intrusions by South Korean vessels into what he termed North Korean waters.

The spokesperson accused President Lee of choosing confrontation over a policy of reconciliation with the North that had been pursued since a historic inter-Korean summit in 2000.

“Now that traitor Lee Myung-Bak and his group opted for confrontation … our revolutionary armed forces are compelled to take an all-out confrontational posture to shatter them,” he said.

He said the military would “preserve” the sea border claimed by the North in the Yellow Sea, “as long as there are ceaseless intrusions into the territorial waters of our side”.

The spokesperson, wearing a military uniform, read the message on state television, according to Yonhap, which monitors the North’s broadcast media.

Yonhap said it was the first message from the North Korean army’s General Staff in 10 years, and was far more strongly worded than the usual denunciation of the South.

The communist state has never recognised the Northern Limit Line, a sea border drawn unilaterally by United States-led UN forces after the 1950 to 1953 Korean War in the Yellow Sea.

Although the line has since served as a de facto border, North Korea has demanded a new sea border, a move the South has rejected.

Six South Korean soldiers were killed in a naval clash in June 2002 in the area, while the North’s casualties were believed to be heavier.

In June 1999 a similar skirmish killed dozens of North Korean sailors.

Analysts said both the North’s statements on Saturday were aimed at incoming US President Barack Obama and not South Korea.

By raising military tension with Seoul it wants to persuade Washington to push ahead with a stalled aid-for-denuclearisation deal despite other world crises.

“Both the statements from the General Chief of Staff and from the Foreign Ministry are a message to the United States,” Choi Jin-Wook, of the Korea Institute for National Unification, told Yonhap.

“If North Korea does harm to the South at this moment, it doesn’t help to improve its relations with the US,” he said.

Inter-Korean ties began to worsen after conservative President Lee took office in February last year, ending 10 years of liberal rule.

Lee rolled back his liberal predecessors’ engagement policy and linked major economic assistance to the North’s denuclearisation.

The North has suspended almost all official contacts. — AFP