SEOUL, South Korea — South Korean President Lee Myung Bak vowed to make Kim Jong Il’s regime pay for military attacks as China sought talks to defuse tension on the Korean peninsula less than a week after North Korea shelled a South Korean island, killing four people.
In a national address today, Lee outlined a series of provocations from the North stretching back two decades, including the attempted assassination of the South Korean president in Rangoon, Burma, in 1983, the bombing of a South Korean airliner in 1987, and the sinking of a South Korean warship, the Cheonan, in March.
“Despite all of these provocations,” Lee said, “we tolerated them in the belief that one day North Korea will change and because of our hope for peace on the Korean peninsula.” He said South Korea has continued to engage in talks with Pyongyang and has given humanitarian assistance to the economically troubled country, but North Korea continued its pursuit of nuclear weapons and continued its attacks.
Now, Lee said, “South Koreans realize that tolerance and generosity bring more provocation.” He said that South Korea would strengthen its military capability and would “make North Korea pay the due price by all means for its provocation from now on.”
While Lee did not specify what form any future retaliation would take, his statement seemed to reflect a shift from the South’s past policy of tolerance.
The crisis began Tuesday, when North Korea fired nearly 200 artillery rounds onto the small island of Yeonpyeong, which lies close to the two countries’ disputed maritime border. The artillery barrage, which demolished scores of houses and other structures, was considered more provocative than past North Korean actions - such as the sinking of a South Korean warship in March - because the island is inhabited by civilians.
“Only a few meters away from where shells landed, there is a school where classes were going on,” Lee said. “I am outraged by the ruthlessness of the North Korean regime, which is even indifferent to the lives of little children.”
After the attack, the United States and South Korea announced plans for a four-day joint military exercise, which began Sunday.
The maneuvers are an “intentional plot” by the United States and South Korea to prepare for war against North Korea, Pyongyang’s main Rodong Sinmun newspaper said in a commentary.
Over the weekend, North Korea seemed to offer an apology of sorts for the deaths of the two civilians, saying, “If that is true, it is very regrettable.” But the North blamed Seoul’s military, for putting civilians in the way of its artillery as “human shields.”
On Sunday, China called for an emergency meeting of delegates to the long-disbanded six-party talks, which include the United States, North and South Korea, China, Japan and Russia. But South Korean officials said they told the Chinese privately that they were not interested in talks at the moment, and some expressed surprise that China made the announcement publicly.
The time isn’t right for a meeting, Lee told visiting Chinese State Councilor Dai Bingguo the same day in Seoul, Yonhap News said.
South Korea will consider China’s proposal “very cautiously,” the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade in Seoul said in a commentary posted on its website.
Publicly at least, U.S. officials were not impressed with China’s response. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton talked with Bingguo on Sunday, telling him that China’s call for emergency consultations could not substitute for action by North Korea to comply with its obligation, said the State Department spokesman, P.J. Crowley.
Clinton told Bingguo that North Korea’s provocative behavior was “destabilizing,” adding that “clear steps by North Korea are needed to demonstrate a change of behavior,” Crowley said.
China’s Xinhua News Agency said Choe Tae Bok, chairman of North Korea’s Supreme People’s Assembly, will visit China from Tuesday to Saturday.
President Barack Obama, along with Japan’s Prime Minister Naoto Kan and Lee, have called on China to use its influence to temper North Korea’s actions. China is North Korea’s main economic and political benefactor.
China has the most leverage with North Korea and “it’s really important that Beijing lead here,” U.S. Adm. Michael Mullen said.
Appearing Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union, U.S. 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.”
In calling for the six-party talks, China wants to look like it’s taking “some initiatives on this important matter,” said Li Cheng, the head of research at the John L. Thornton China Center at the Brookings Institution in Washington. North Korea also would like to resume the talks, so this is “the best possible action for China, from China’s perspective,” he said in an e-mail.
Victor Cha, who holds the Korea Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said the Obama administration probably will find China’s suggestion “totally useless.”
“People have been calling for getting back to talks for the past three years,” Cha said. “It’s typical no-risk, no-cost, no-commitment China.”
Later today, a South Koreancounty designated Yeonpyeong Island as “off-limits” to civilians. The decision could pave the way for the evacuation of the island.
Ongjin County spokesman Lim Byung-chan said the designation was issued today at the request of South Korea’s military.
South Korea’s Defense Ministry said it will discuss whether to evacuate about 300 remaining residents, journalists and officials from the island.
Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the U.S. is trying to prevent tensions over last week’s attack close to the disputed maritime border from escalating into a more significant confrontation.
“We’re very focused on restraint and not letting this thing get out of control,” Mullen told CNN in an interview. “Nobody wants this thing to turn into a conflict.”
The U.S. called its naval drills, which include four smaller warships as well as the supercarrier USS George Washington, “defensive in nature” and said they were initially planned before the shelling of Yeonpyeong.
The nuclear-powered carrier, which holds about 85 aircraft, was last in waters off the Korean Peninsula in July as part of drills after the Cheonan’s sinking, which killed 46 sailors.
The exercises today were to include a live-fire drill by multiple aircraft from the nuclear powered George Washington, which carries 6,000 sailors and 75 fighter jets. South Korean news media quoted a Korean military official as saying the aircraft would be firing on mock targets in the water, while South Korean Aegis destroyers will practice detecting and destroying targets.
South Korea’s Yonhap news agency said the E-8C joint surveillance target attack radar system, known as STARS, had been deployed to detect any North Korean air activity during the drill.
Information for this article was contributed by Bomi Lim, Sungwoo Park, Justin Blum, Joshua Zumbrun, Miles Weiss, Michael Forsythe, Saeromi Shin and Maria Kolesnikova of Bloomberg News; by David Guttenfelder, Jean H. Lee, Hyung-jin Kim, Foster Klug, Seulki Kim, Kelly Olsen, Wally Santana, Gillian Wong and Douglass K. Daniel of The Associated Press; by Ian Johnson, Helene Cooper, Sharon LaFraniere, Martin Fackler, Su-Hyun Lee, Thom Shanker and Zhang Jing of The New York Times; and by Keith B. Richburg and Yoongjung Seo of The Washington Post.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 11/29/2010