YEONPYEONG ISLAND – South Korea vowed on Saturday to go ahead with a live-fire drill on a border island bombarded by North Korea last month, despite the North’s threat to strike back hard.
“There is no change in our stance with regards to the live-fire exercise,” a defence ministry spokesman told AFP. On Yeonpyeong, focus of the latest flare-up which has sparked regional alarm, propaganda balloons were launched Saturday — but no artillery shells.
The one-day firing training exercise, scheduled for some time between Saturday and Tuesday, may happen early next week, when the weather is expected to improve, Yonhap news agency quoted a military source as saying. The North Friday threatened a new and deadlier attack if the South’s marines launch shells into what the communist state claims as its own waters.
Last month’s bombardment of Yeonpyeong killed two marines and two civilians and damaged dozens of homes. It came after a firing drill into the sea by South Korean marines based on the island. Pyongyang disputes the Yellow Sea border drawn after the 1950-53 war and claims the waters around Yeonpyeong and other frontline islands as its own maritime territory.
The North’s latest warning sharply raised the stakes in the crisis. US politician Bill Richardson, who is visiting Pyongyang, described the situation as a “tinderbox”. Russia urged South Korea not to go ahead with the exercise and China, the North’s sole major ally, called for talks to ease tensions. Vice Foreign Minister Zhang Zhijun said Beijing was “deeply concerned and worried” about the situation on the peninsula, the state Xinhua news agency reported.
Zhang, who summoned South Korea’s ambassador Yu Woo-Ik on Friday afternoon to express concern at the planned drill, said the situation was “extremely precarious, highly complicated and sensitive”. South Korea, outraged at the first shelling of civilian areas since the war, has fortified Yeonpyeong with more troops and artillery and vowed to hit back hard with air power against any attack.
Strong winds and fog made it difficult to start the drill this weekend, a senior defence ministry official said. “Some reports say the drill may be postponed or cancelled due to diplomatic or external factors, but we won’t be affected and will go ahead with the drill,” the official told Yonhap on condition of anonymity.
Islanders were fearful, with some criticising Seoul for planning the upcoming drill. “The situation makes me too nervous to stay since North Korea may fire artillery at any time in the near future,” said farmer Kang Yeong-Gil, 67, adding he would leave as soon as he sells his rice crop. Anti-Pyongyang activists launched giant balloons carrying 200,000 leaflets denouncing last month’s attack towards the North’s coastline 12 km (seven miles) away.
“Strike Kim Jong-Il and Kim Jong-Un who attacked South Korea,” read one, in reference to Kim’s youngest son Jong-Un, the heir apparent. US State Department spokesman Philip Crowley Friday defended the South’s right to hold the drill in the face of North Korea’s “ongoing provocations”. But he said Washington trusts that its ally the South “will be very cautious in terms of what it does”. The North’s website Uriminzokkiri said the drill could spark nuclear war.
