June 12, 2010

US presses China to rein in N.Korea

Filed under: Asia,China,East Asia,Military,North Korea,South Korea,WMD — mungurk @ 23:07

US presses China to rein in N.Korea

By Shaun Tandon (AFP) – 2 days ago

WASHINGTON — The United States is pressing China to rein in North Korea, voicing “dismay” that the Asian power has not put more pressure on its ally as tensions build over the sinking of a South Korean warship.

China has offered condolences over the March sinking of the Cheonan but has not placed blame on North Korea, which has warned of “serious” consequences if the issue is brought before the United Nations Security Council.

Admiral Mike Mullen, the top US uniformed military officer, said late Wednesday that China needed to take a greater role after the purported torpedo attack, which claimed 46 lives in one of the deadliest incidents since the Korean War.

“I’ve been encouraged by public statements made recently by Chinese leadership as to the seriousness of this incident and the need for accountability and yet dismayed by a fairly tepid response to calls by the international community for support,” Mullen said.

Mullen, speaking at a dinner of the Asia Society, indicated that the United States would soon go ahead with military exercises with South Korea which were set for early June but delayed to give a chance for diplomacy with North Korea.

“We in the United States military stand firmly by our allies in the Republic of Korea and will move forward, in keeping with international agreements, to demonstrate that solidarity in coming weeks,” Mullen said.

“I think it’s of no surprise to anyone that we are planning maritime exercises to sharpen skills and strengthen collective defenses.”

South Korea has asked the Security Council to respond to the ship’s sinking and said Wednesday that investigators would brief the body’s 15 members on the probe at the request of council president Mexico.

Seoul’s Vice Foreign Minister Chun Yung-Woo returned Wednesday from a trip to lobby China but said that differences remained.

“We agreed to keep working toward reaching acceptable solutions, based on our strategic cooperative partnership,” Chun said.

North Korea’s UN representative wrote a letter to the council urging it not to be swayed by US “lies” as it was before the 2003 invasion of Iraq, according to state media.

The letter warned that if the warship probe was put on the council’s agenda, “no one would dare imagine how serious its consequences would be with regard to the peace and security on the Korean peninsula.”

Experts have speculated widely on North Korea’s motivations for the sinking, with some believing that the communist state is trying to show its mettle as part of the succession to leader Kim Jong-Il.

China’s relations are not always warm with North Korea, with Beijing saying Tuesday it protested after border guards from its neighbor shot dead three Chinese citizens.

But analysts believe that China’s main goal is stability as it fears the prospect of North Korean refugees flooding over the border or a unified Korea with US troops right on its border.

President Barack Obama’s administration has sought broader cooperation with China. But relations between the two militaries have remained uneasy, with Beijing declining Defense Secretary Robert Gates’s requests to visit.

Gates had a tense exchange on Saturday with a Chinese general at a security conference in Singapore.

Major General Zhu Chenghu asked Gates to explain what he called a contradiction between the US condemnation of North Korea and a more cautious US reaction to a deadly raid by Israel against a Gaza-bound aid ship.

“The Chinese military is the most provincial, and I would say the most xenophobic, element of the Chinese elite,” Jeffrey Bader, Obama’s top aide on Asia, told a forum this week.

China in January cut off military relations after the United States in January unveiled a 6.4-billion-dollar arms package to Taiwan, which Beijing claims as part of Chinese territory.

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June 4, 2010

War Possible Any Moment, Says North Korea

Filed under: Asia,East Asia,Military,North Korea,South Korea — mungurk @ 10:24

source

N.Korea: War possible any moment

Published: 3/06/2010 at 11:52 PM
Online news: Breakingnews

A North Korean soldier keeps watch over the South side at the truce village of Panmunjom in the Demilitarised Zone separating the two Koreas on June 2. A North Korean diplomat said Thursday that tensions on the Korean peninsula were running so high over the sinking of a South Korean warship that “war may break out at any moment.”

In a speech to the international Conference on Disarmament, Ri Jang-Gon, deputy permanent representative for North Korea at the United Nations in Geneva, blamed the “grave situation” on South Korea and the United States.

“The present situation of the Korean peninsula is so grave that a war may break out at any moment,” he said.

International investigators on May 20 announced their findings that a North Korean submarine had fired a heavy torpedo to sink the warship, in what has been described as the most serious act of aggression from the North since the Korean war 60 years ago.

Forty-six South Korean crew died when the warship sank near the disputed Yellow Sea border with the North in March in mysterious circumstances after a reported explosion.

South Korea has announced a series of reprisals including cutting off trade with its communist neighbour.

The North has denied involvement, and responded to the South’s reprisals with threats of war.

Ri reiterated that North Korea had nothing to do with the sinking.

He claimed that North Koreans “were making their utmost efforts to attain the goal of a powerful and prosperous country by the year 2012″ and needed a “peaceful environment” to do so.

“A peace treaty is the only successful and reasonable way for the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula,” he added.

The two countries have never reached a peace agreement since the 1950-53 war, relying on a tenuous Cold War era armistice.

However, he also warned that the North Korean people were “ready to promptly react to… various forms of tough measures including an all out war.”

US Defense Secretary Robert Gates said on his way to an Asian security conference in Singapore that the United States and South Korea may hold additional military exercises in response to the alleged torpedoing of the ship.

Gates said there were no plans to deploy a US aircraft carrier as part of the exercises.

He was due to hold talks on the incident with his South Korean and Japanese counterparts.

In Geneva, the North Korean diplomat accused Seoul of trying to ignite a campaign against Pyongyang with an “anti-DPRK” policy intent on destroying exchanges and steps to reconciliation.

“The results of investigation made by South Korean regime is sheer fabrication based on assumptions guesses and supposition,” said Ri.

South Korea’s delegate retorted that the incident was a grave violation of the armistice agreement,” adding that the evidence of an attack was “undeniable”.

He said the statement in the UN’s permanent arms control forum appeared to have been made “for propaganda purposes.”

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June 3, 2010

US considers sending warship to Korean Peninsula

Filed under: Americas,Asia,East Asia,Military,North America,North Korea,South Korea,USA — mungurk @ 10:59

source

US considering sending aircraft carrier to Korean Peninsula

Thursday, June 3, 2010, 8:25 [IST]

Washington, June 3 (ANI): With tensions escalating on the Korean Peninsula, the U.S. is weighing whether to deploy the massive aircraft carrier USS George Washington to the Yellow Sea, where North Korea allegedly sank a South Korean warship.

Buzz up!

The New York Times quoted American defense officials, as saying that such a deployment would be a show of force by Washington, which has vowed to protect South Korea and blunt North Korea’s aggressive designs.

An international investigation last month blamed North Korea for torpedoing the Cheonan warship in March, killing 46 South Korean sailors.

U.S. officials, who spoke anonymously, said that a final decision on deployment of the nuclear-powered carrier was likely by the end of the week.

If the deployment occurs, the USS George Washington would head to the Yellow Sea by Tuesday for naval exercises with the South Koreans, two senior Pentagon officials told Fox News.

The deployment of the aircraft carrier would be seen as a particularly aggressive move by the United States because of its sheer size.

According to a Navy website, the carrier is 244 feet high from keel to mast and can accommodate some 6,250 crew members.

Built in the 1980s, the carrier uses two nuclear reactors that would allow it to steam almost 18 years before needing to refuel. (ANI)

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May 23, 2010

Through UN, South Korea Seeking Damages Against North Korea in Cheonan Sinking

Filed under: Asia,China,East Asia,North Korea,South Korea — mungurk @ 22:13

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South Korea to seek U.N. penalties for North Korea in Cheonan sinking

By John Pomfret

Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, May 24, 2010

BEIJING — South Korea said Sunday that it will ask the U.N. Security Council to punish North Korea for its deadly attack on a South Korean warship, a move that could ratchet up pressure on the isolated Stalinist regime and add a new flash point in U.S. relations with China.

South Korean President Lee Myung-bak will make the request in an address to his nation Monday during which he will detail a package of measures in response to the March 26 torpedoing of the 1,200-ton Cheonan and the killing of 46 sailors, said his spokesman Lee Dong-kwan.

A senior U.S. official, traveling with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton in China, said the United States will back “all the steps the South Koreans are going to announce tomorrow.” In an indication of the seriousness with which the Obama administration views the unfolding drama between the North and the South, home to nearly 29,000 U.S. troops, he added: “We have not faced something like this in decades.”

Among other measures that could be pushed by Lee, analysts said, are cuts in South Korean trade with the North, returning North Korea to the U.S. State Department’s list of states that sponsor terrorism, and tighter U.N. sanctions on Pyongyang. Lee has apparently ruled out military action because he does not want to trigger an all-out war.

The official said that, based on talks over the past two days, Chinese officials have not accepted the results of a South Korean investigation — backed by experts from the United States, Australia, Britain and Sweden — that implicated North Korea in the attack. As such, it is unclear whether Beijing will support Lee’s call in the Security Council.

China’s reluctance to agree with the report underscores the challenges the United States faces as it seeks to forge closer ties to Beijing. The U.S. official also noted Sunday that China and the United States still do not see eye to eye on the details of planned economic sanctions on Iran for its failure to stop its nuclear enrichment program. Of specific concern, he said, are disagreements between Beijing and Washington about how investments in Iran’s oil and gas sector will be treated. China has committed to investing more than $80 billion in Iran’s energy sector; tightened sanctions against Tehran could threaten those investments.

U.S. officials said the Obama administration considers the situation in Northeast Asia and Iran so pressing that on Sunday night in Beijing, Clinton dispensed with the niceties of protocol and got down to a substantive discussion in the middle of a private banquet to welcome the biggest delegation of U.S. officials to Beijing to date. The officials — a band of 200 led by Clinton and Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner and specializing in fields such as health, energy and the environment, counterterrorism, nuclear proliferation, and human rights — are in Beijing for the U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue.

Reverberations in Tokyo

Officials and analysts said that the attack on the Cheonan seems to be redefining the security equation in Northeast Asia, bolstering the United States, damaging China and concentrating the minds of Japanese officials.

The attack has provided political cover for Japan’s government — only the second opposition party to take power in nearly 50 years — to end an eight-month-long feud with the United States and accept a plan to relocate a U.S. Marine base within Okinawa. On Sunday, Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama announced that his country would abide by a 14-year-old agreement with the United States to move the Futenma air base in Okinawa to a less populated part of the island. U.S. officials responded cautiously, however, because important details have yet to be ironed out.

Hatoyama’s government had campaigned on a platform that rejected the Futenma deal and advocated a more Asia-centric view of Japan’s place in the world. But the Cheonan incident reminded them “that this is still a very dangerous neighborhood and that the U.S.-Japan alliance and the basing arrangements that are part of that are critical to Japan’s security,” the senior U.S. official said.

Tough options for China

The attack and its aftermath also threaten China’s place in the region and could force it to make an unwanted choice between South Korea and North Korea — two countries that it has handled deftly since normalizing relations with Seoul in 1992. South Korea wants China, which is a permanent member of the Security Council, to back Seoul’s call to take the Cheonan issue to the council. So does the United States, the U.S. official said.

But that could risk hurting Pyongyang, and China appears committed to maintaining the North Korean regime above all.

“For China,” the U.S. official said, “they are in uncharted waters.”

China reacted slowly to the Cheonan’s sinking, waiting almost a month before offering South Korea condolences. Then it feted North Korean leader Kim Jong Il in early May, apparently offering him another large package of aid, Asian diplomats said. China’s attitude has enraged South Korean officials.

Michael Green, a national security official during George W. Bush’s administration, said the Cheonan crisis highlights just how differently China views its security needs than the rest of the players in Northeast Asia. For years, as China worked with the United States, Russia, South Korea and Japan to try to persuade North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons programs, these differences were obscured. But the Cheonan’s sinking has changed that.

While the incident is pushing officials in South Korea, Japan and the United States to contain North Korea and even prepare for a future without a North Korean state, Green said, China appears intent on redoubling its efforts to ensure North Korea’s stability.

“The Chinese are very negative about the prospect of a democratic, united Korea on their border,” Green said. “They want to keep North Korea alive.”

“This incident is going to drive the United States, South Korea and Japan closer together,” he said. “China won’t be happy.”

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao will travel to South Korea this week for a three-nation summit, which will also include Japan. The attack — and China’s reaction — is expected to dominate those talks.

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March 18, 2010

South Korea Signs Agreement to Build Nuclear Plant in Turkey

Filed under: Asia,East Asia,Economy,Europe,Russia,South Korea,Southern Europe,Turkey — mungurk @ 09:49

source

POWERnews
A preliminary move on March 10 puts Turkey closer than ever to building its first nuclear power plant. The plant, which would consist of four reactors with a total 5,600 MW capacity, would be built in northern Turkey on the Black Sea coast.

Though details remain to be worked out, the protocol between two state-owned power companies—Korean Electric Power Corp. (KEPCO) and Elektrik Üretim (EUAS)—is big news for both countries. Turkey has long wanted a nuclear plant, but setbacks of various kinds, including financing problems and concern about earthquake faults, have thwarted all previous attempts at moving past the wishing stage. For its part, KEPCO has been actively working to develop plants beyond its home borders and has announced a goal of exporting 80 reactors, worth $400 billion, by 2030.

In an interview with the Financial Times, Turkish Energy Minister Taner Yildiz said he wanted nuclear power to generate 10% of his country’s electricity by 2020.

The Financial Times also reported that KEPCO and a Turkish construction group, Enka Insaat ve Sanayi, would form a 50-50 joint venture to construct the plant.

Though most news sources reported on the agreement as essentially a done deal, the Anatolia news agency quoted Yildiz as saying, “If any company from the United States, Canada, Japan, France makes a proposal, we are open to work similarly with them.”

Since January, Turkey has been working with the Russian Federation to build a nuclear plant in Akkuyu, in southern Turkey, on the Mediterranean. That project has been fraught with controversy from its original inception in 2000. Given KEPCO’s aggressive goals and schedules, it’s possible that its planned project could come online before the Russian one.

Sources: POWERnews, UPI, Today’s Zaman, Financial Times, AFP

March 17, 2010

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November 12, 2009

North Korea threatens South over naval clash

Filed under: Asia,East Asia,Military,North Korea,South Korea — mungurk @ 09:20

source

By HYUNG-JIN KIM, Associated Press Writer Hyung-jin Kim, Associated Press Writer – Thu Nov 12, 5:19 am ET

SEOUL, South Korea – North Korea threatened Thursday to punish South Korea after their first naval skirmish in seven years, as Seoul expressed confidence it could deter any attack from its communist neighbor.

The two Koreas clashed in waters off their western coast Tuesday with each side accusing the other of violating the disputed sea border and firing first. The fighting came ahead of a planned visit to South Korea next week by President Barack Obama.

On Thursday, the North’s main Rodong Sinmun newspaper said in a commentary that it will not tolerate what it claimed was South Korea’s aggression in its waters.

“Our unchanged principle is no forgiveness and merciless punishment for warmongers who infringe upon our republic’s dignity and sovereignty,” said the commentary, carried by the official Korean Central News Agency. It didn’t specify how the North would punish the South.

Another state newspaper, Minju Joson, also warned that South Korea would face “costly consequences.” It said the clash stemmed from a plot by the South to disrupt direct talks that are planned between Pyongyang and Washington by inspiring anti-North Korea sentiment among American officials.

Analysts agree that the skirmish was likely linked to Obama’s visit — though they have suggested that the North may have been looking to improve its bargaining position with the U.S. by stoking tensions.

Obama, due to arrive in Seoul on Nov. 18 for a regional meeting, plans to send a senior envoy to Pyongyang by year’s end for the first direct talks between the wartime foes during his administration. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said in Singapore on Wednesday that the fight would not scuttle a planned visit to Pyongyang by special envoy Stephen Bosworth.

Bosworth’s trip is aimed at persuading communist North Korea to return to six-nation nuclear disarmament negotiations, which Pyongyang walked away from earlier this year.

South Korean officials shrugged off the North’s threats, saying they were ready to deter any aggression.

“We will resolutely safeguard” the Northern Limit Line, a de facto western sea border drawn up by the U.N. command at the end of the 1950-53 Korean War, a Defense Ministry official said. The North has long insisted the line be redrawn farther south.

An officer with the Joint Chiefs of Staff also reiterated that the skirmish broke out as the North Korean ship opened fire after violating the border and ignoring warnings shots from the South Korean ship.

Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity citing department policy.

The mass-circulation Dong-a Ilbo newspaper reported Thursday that South Korean ships fired a total of about 4,000 rounds at the North Korean vessel, inflicting so much damage that it had to be towed by another North Korean ship to a nearby naval base.

One senior South Korean officer told The Associated Press that a North Korean was killed and three others wounded. He spoke on condition of anonymity because the matter involved intelligence.

A South Korean ship was lightly damaged, and there were no casualties on their side, officials said.

Yang Moo-jin, a professor at Seoul’s University of North Korean Studies, downplayed the seriousness of the North’s threats, saying Pyongyang was unlikely to take further military action because it appeared to be using the skirmish to get Washington’s attention. He said it was in their interest to “show the Korean peninsula is still unstable” ahead of anticipated direct talks.

Following the skirmish, South Korea‘s 680,000-member military went on high alert to cope with possible retaliation. South Korean media reported the country has deployed up to four destroyers and warships near the sea border — the scene of two bloody fights in 1999 and 2002.

South Korea’s military said there has been no sign of suspicious activities from North Korean troops, but news reports said the North has also placed its 1.2 million-strong army on high alert.

Defense Minister Kim Tae-young told the National Assembly on Tuesday that he believed the North may take retaliatory actions, saying President Lee Myung-bak “also has such concerns.”

The two Koreas have remained technically at war since the Korean War ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty. The U.S., which has never had diplomatic relations with North Korea, stations 28,500 troops in South Korea to deter potential North Korean aggression.

___

Associated Press writers Kwang-tae Kim in Seoul and Matthew Lee in Singapore contributed to this report.

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October 29, 2009

S.Korea announces arrest of N.Korean spy

Filed under: Asia,Counterintelligence,East Asia,Intelligence,North Korea,South Korea — mungurk @ 17:18

source

Thu Oct 29, 7:51 am ET

SEOUL (AFP) – South Korean security authorities Thursday announced the arrest of a college lecturer on charges of spying for North Korea, saying he was recruited by Pyongyang’s agents in India.

The man, identified only as Lee, is accused of passing information on South Korean military operations and facilities to the communist North, state prosecutors and the National Intelligence Service said in a joint statement.

Lee, 37, who was recruited in 1992 while studying at a college in New Delhi, visited Pyongyang twice to become a communist party member and received a total of 50,600 dollars in operational funds, they said.

He allegedly stole classified information using his status as a member of the National Unification Advisory Council, a state organisation promoting unification of the peninsula.

Information he passed to the North between 1997 and February this year included locations of key government facilities as well as US and South Korean military facilities, the statement said.

Lee had accumulated military information and data while serving as a troop information and education officer in the army in 2001, it said.

He received a North Korean decoration during a trip to Singapore in 2003 and used some of his operational funds to study in India and also for a doctorate in South Korea, the statement said.

“The case tells our country to check its security system as he has served as an opinion leader in our society,” prosecutor Yoon Kap-Geun told Yonhap news agency, calling him “a (North Korean) scholarship student and spy.”

The two nations have remained technically at war since their 1950-1953 conflict and Seoul several times in recent years has announced the arrest of spies for the North.

In the most famous case last year, a 35-year-old woman who came from the North in the guise of a defector and used sex to secure military secrets was jailed for five years.

North Korea denied she was its agent, calling her “human scum” and describing the trial as a “threadbare charade” orchestrated to heighten tensions.

Seoul’s official data shows more than 4,500 people have been exposed as spies for the North since the peninsula was divided in 1948.

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Japan Warship Collides With Commercial Vessel, Both Engulfed in Flames

Filed under: Asia,East Asia,Japan,Military,South Korea — mungurk @ 15:48

source

Tuesday , October 27, 2009

TOKYO —

A Japanese navy destroyer and a South Korean container ship collided Tuesday off southern Japan, sparking fires on both ships and injuring three crew members, officials said.

The ships collided under a bridge linking the Japanese main islands of Kyushu and Honshu in the narrow Kanmon Strait, Japan Coast Guard spokesman Seishi Izumi said.

One crew member on the destroyer JS Kurama was slightly injured with scratches and bruises while two others were suffering from smoke inhalation, a Defense Ministry spokesman said on condition of anonymity, citing policy.

None of the South Korean ship’s 16 crew members — 12 from South Korea and four from Myanmar — was injured, Izumi said.

The fire on the 7,400-ton container ship Carina Star was extinguished shortly after the collision. The blaze on the destroyer was mostly under control late Tuesday but its temperature was still extremely high, the defense official said.

Officials are investigating the case as possible professional negligence and have begun questioning crew members on both ships, Izumi said.

The defense official said the Japanese ship’s bow was badly burned and mangled, but the vessel was still capable of traveling on its own. The container ship’s hull was grazed near its bow.

TV footage showed orange flames shooting from the vessels in the dark.

Izumi said the fire apparently broke out as a result of the impact of the collision, with paint inside a storage room on the destroyer catching fire.

The accident occurred under the Kanmon Bridge connecting Kyushu and the western end of Honshu — the narrowest part of the strait — about 530 miles (850 kilometers) southwest of Tokyo, Izumi said.

All sea traffic in the strait was suspended for about four hours after the accident.

The Kurama, carrying 360 sailors, was on its way to its home port of Sasebo on Kyushu after serving as the flagship for the country’s triennial fleet review Sunday at the port of Yokosuka. The container ship had left the South Korean port of Busan and was headed to Osaka in western Japan.

Last year, a collision between a destroyer and a tuna trawler off the coast of Chiba, near Tokyo, left two fishermen dead. That accident triggered an uproar in Japan, where many people harbor pacifist sentiments and remain sensitive to anything related to the military.

Defense Minister Toshimi Kitazawa quickly held a news conference to express regret.

“We deeply apologize to the people for causing concerns,” he said. “We will quickly find out what caused the accident.”

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October 27, 2009

Seoul offers to ship food aid to North Korea

Filed under: Asia,East Asia,North Korea,South Korea — mungurk @ 08:41

source

Posted: 26 October 2009 1329 hrs

SEOUL: South Korea Monday offered to ship about 10,000 tons of corn to North Korea, in what would be the first official aid to its hungry neighbour for almost two years.

The South also offered to provide 20 tons of milk powder and medicine for children, pregnant women and other vulnerable people, the unification ministry said.

The proposed shipment through the Red Cross would be the first official one since a conservative government came to power in Seoul in February 2008 and linked major assistance to progress on denuclearisation.

After months of bitter hostility, the communist North began making peace overtures to the South in late summer. Persistent media reports say the two sides have held preliminary talks about a possible summit.

The figure is a fraction of the aid offered in previous years. The unification ministry admitted it was far less than needed but said the North must mend relations before shipments could be increased.

A third of North Korean women and young children are malnourished and the country will run short of almost 1.8 million tons of food this year, the United Nations World Food Programme said in a report last month.

“We cannot say 10,000 tons is sufficient in view of North Korea’s food shortage and other conditions,” said ministry spokeswoman Lee Jong-Joo.

“We are providing purely humanitarian aid,” she said, adding Seoul would use about four billion won (US$3.39 million) from a state fund to buy corn from abroad.

“There is no change in our position that massive food aid depends on how relations between the two Koreas develop,” she said.

The ministry also said it would provide 949 million won for several local humanitarian organisations operating in the North, the second such funding since an allocation was made in August.

Under previous liberal governments Seoul sent around 400,000 tons of rice and 300,000 tons of fertiliser a year to the North, which suffers persistent severe food shortages.

Pyongyang sought aid from Seoul at talks on October 16 on arranging more reunions for families separated since the 1950-1953 Korean War. The talks ended without agreement pending consideration of the request.

North Korea has yet to respond to the latest offer, made through the Red Cross. But Yonhap news agency said it was likely coordinated in advance before the announcement.

Last year the South offered 50,000 tons of corn but the North rejected the shipment amid high tensions.

- AFP/yb

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