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SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea escalated its vitriol against South Korea and the United States on Wednesday with warnings of a “powerful military strike” if any North Korean ships were stopped or searched as part of an American-led operation to intercept vessels suspected of carrying unconventional weapons.
South Korea agreed to join the operation after North Korea tested a nuclear device on Monday, its second nuclear test in three years. The North had earlier warned the South not to participate in the operation, known as the Proliferation Security Initiative.
“We consider this a declaration of war against us,” North Korea said in a statement carried by its official news agency, KCNA. “Any hostile act against our peaceful vessels, including search and seizure, will be considered an unpardonable infringement on our sovereignty, and we will immediately respond with a powerful military strike.”
The North Koreans also said in the statement that they “no longer feel bound by the armistice” that ended the fighting in the 1950-53 Korean War. Technically, the two Koreas have remained at war for more than 50 years, because the 1953 armistice was never replaced with a final peace treaty. The North Koreans had previously called the armistice a “useless piece of paper” and declared that they no longer felt bound by it. But they have rarely used the threat of abandoning the armistice.
The North’s bellicose language was likely to increase tensions created by the nuclear test on Monday, which drew swift, angry and widespread condemnation worldwide. At the United Nations, the United States and Japan were drawing up a rough draft of a Security Council resolution that would concentrate on five or six ways to flesh out existing sanctions against North Korea that had never been enforced, diplomats said. Although China supports the idea of sanctions, it wants to work slowly and to bolster measures first passed in 2006 rather than creating new ones, they said.
The proposals include banning import!s and exports of all arms — only heavy weapons are restricted now. “We want to dry out their resources for the military,” said a senior Western diplomat, speaking anonymously because of the sensitivity of the negotiations.
North Korea has said that it will consider sanctions a declaration of war.
“If North Korea stages a provocation, we will respond resolutely,” the South Korean military said in a statement, reacting to the North’s threats. Citing a “strong” military alliance with the United States, it said, “We advise our people to trust our military’s solid readiness and feel safe.”
Since inter-Korean relations began deteriorating a year ago, analysts at government-run and private policy institutes in South Korea have often warned of a possible naval skirmish. In interviews in recent weeks, they have said that if South Korea joined the global interdiction program, that would increase the chances of a North Korean provocation. But, they said, any clash between the Koreas would probably be a limited one.
The analysts said North Korea might engage in a limited armed provocation along the border, especially along the disputed western sea border. That is where the two navies clashed in skirmishes in June 1999 and June 2002 during the crabbing season.
South Korea’s president, Lee Myung-bak, lauded his people on Wednesday for their “mature response” to the North’s behavior. He noted that the North’s nuclear test and its six subsequent short-range missile launchings did not affect stock and foreign exchange markets beyond initial jitters.
Seoul, the South Korean capital, with a population of 10.4 million, is just 35 miles from the North Korean border and within the range of North Korean missiles and artillery. But most South Koreans and foreign investors here are accustomed to threats from the North.
South Korea’s decision to join the antiproliferation initiative — a global effort that seeks to interrupt air and sea deliveries of nuclear and other unconventional weapons, missile parts and delivery systems — is largely symbolic, analysts said. South Korea has said that it will stop only suspicious ships in its own territorial waters, a sovereign right it already has. In addition, the chance that the North would send ships carrying such materials into South Korean waters is low.
Reporting was contributed by Mark McDonald from Hong Kong, Hiroko Tabuchi from Tokyo, Thom Shanker from Washington, and Neil MacFarquhar from the United Nations.
What is North Korea's game plan? | |||||
Even by its own shrill standards, North Korea's recent behaviour is hyper-militant. But why? Last month's launch of a long-range dual-use rocket - maybe a satellite, certainly a potential missile - prompted censure by the UN Security Council. North Korea must have expected this, having been similarly rebuked twice for missile and nuclear launches in 2006. Yet Pyongyang professed high dudgeon at what was in truth mild UN Security Council remonstrance: just a statement, not a full resolution. On this flimsy pretext, in a fine show of pique it repudiated the six-party talks and said it would resume its nuclear programme. Monday's nuclear test showed this to be no idle threat. But why? Why now? What is really going on? Less well known is that four separate high-level US delegations - nominally private but including Stephen Bosworth, now the Obama administration's point man on North Korea - visited Pyongyang earlier this year. All got a frosty reception. Their hosts professed no interest in full relations with the US, long regarded as the ultimate prize sought by Kim Jong-il. So how does this latest North Korean jigsaw - with too few and misshapen pieces, as always - fit together? Stringing along There are two broad possibilities and variants within either of those. What message is Kim Jong-il trying to send, and to whom? Getting Obama's attention is one widely-touted suggestion. Yet on closer inspection this hardly adds up.
Everyone knew, because he told us, that Barack Obama was ready to engage with America's foes. He means it, and he is doing it. With Cuba and others, change is already under way. So surely this is the US President Kim Jong-il has been waiting for? True, Obama is busy with the Middle East and the financial crisis. But his door, and mind, are open. It did not need a bomb or rocket to blast a way in and get a hearing in Washington. To the contrary, these were bound to backfire. There have to be more Security Council resolutions and maybe sanctions, however ineffectual, when a rogue state makes a mockery of international law. Kim Jong-il is no fool. So we must conclude, definitively now, that he has no intention of emulating Libya's Colonel Gaddafi and ever giving up his weapons of mass destruction. The six long years of the six-party talks were just stringing us along. Without nuclear weapons, North Korea would be just another miserable tyranny. With them, it commands attention - if not respect. Or maybe Kim Jong-il would have made peace, but hardliners used his illness last year to seize the helm and batten down the hatches. Yet abandoning diplomacy altogether is hardly a serious long-term option, for a failed state reliant on Chinese aid to feed its hungry people.
Provoking Beijing is a risky game. A patient patron hitherto, China may finally snap and pull the plug on so tiresome a client - as Moscow did in 1991, devastating the North's economy. Is the new turn merely tactical? If so, it is a dire miscalculation. Mr Kim's old game of militant mendicancy - doing bad things, to be paid to stop - will no longer wash. Everyone is fed up. More exactly, the Dear Leader could have cleaned up if (and only if) he stuck with the six-party talks. Peace and real disarmament would bring North Korea huge financial rewards: $10bn (£6.3bn) for full relations with Japan, and surely much more from a relieved Seoul. One faint hope is that they may not really mean all this. That brings us to the second broad hypothesis. Succession plan? Rather than being any kind of odd signal to the wider world, North Korea's new militancy might be primarily driven by internal events, largely invisible to outside eyes. Perverse as it sounds, barking louder than ever may be their way of scaring us off while they effect a delicate transition. This could be a smokescreen behind which, not before time, one of Kim's mysterious and untried sons is being wheeled into place as his eventual successor. If so, we may get more sense out of Pyongyang once such internal ructions settle down. But to speculate thus may be clutching at straws. The view that North Korea is a rational actor - if only we are patient and avoid upsetting them - looks, let's face it, increasingly threadbare. My fear is that defining itself against the world is hardwired into North Korea's outlook. For over a decade, Bill Clinton, former South Korean President Kim Dae-jung, China, Russia and others strove to lead this most stubborn and suspicious of mules to water. But none could make it drink, beyond a few sips. A toe in the water is as far as Kim Jong-il will ever go, on economic reform and peace alike. When it comes to the crunch, he refuses the fence. At the risk of flogging equine metaphors to death, some blame the likes of George W Bush - before his U-turn to engagement - for frightening the horses with "axis of evil" rhetoric, so reinforcing Pyongyang's paranoia. But ultimately, the choice and fault is Kim's. China and Vietnam show there is another way - the only way. North Korea is on a road to nowhere. Aidan Foster-Carter is honorary senior research fellow in sociology and modern Korea at Leeds University | |||||
Barking louder than ever may be their way of scaring us off while they effect a delicate transition 
N Korea threatens military action | |||||
North Korea says it has abandoned the truce that ended the Korean war, amid rising tension in the region. It blamed its decision on South Korea joining a US-led initiative to search ships for nuclear weapons. It said the South's actions were a "declaration of war", and pledged to attack if its ships were stopped. The move is part of an increasingly hard line being taken by North Korea, and comes two days after it conducted an underground nuclear test. Meanwhile, South Korean news reports say that steam has been seen coming from a plant at the North's main nuclear facility, a sign that it has made good on its threat to restart efforts to make weapons-grade plutonium. The United Nations Security Council is working on a strong resolution condemning North Korea's actions, including possible punitive measures. Anti-proliferation In a statement to the North's official news agency, KCNA, the military warned that it no longer considered itself bound by the terms of a truce which ended the war between the two Koreas. That agreement has preserved a tense peace for more than five decades.
The immediate cause of North Korea's actions, it said, was South Korea's announcement on Tuesday that it would definitely join the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) - a US-led campaign to search ships carrying suspicious cargoes to prevent trafficking of weapons of mass destruction. Joining the PSI "is a natural obligation", South Korean Foreign Minister Yu Myung-hwan told reporters. "It will help control North Korea's development of dangerous material." But North Korea's response has been unequivocal. "Any hostile act against our peaceful vessels, including search and seizure, will be considered an unpardonable infringement on our sovereignty," a spokesman for the North's army told KCNA. "We will immediately respond with a powerful military strike." Tensions have already risen significantly across the Korean peninsula in recent weeks. Provocation Last month North Korea launched a long-range rocket over Japanese airspace, angering the international community. Pyongyang said the rocket carried a satellite, but several nations viewed it as cover for a missile test. The US envoy to the UN strongly criticised the North The UN Security Council condemned the rocket launch, and in retaliation North Korea announced it was quitting long-running six-nation negotiations on its nuclear disarmament. It also said it would reopen its main nuclear plant at Yongbyon, which was closed in July 2007 as part of a disarmament deal. According to South Korean media reports, the plant may now be reactivated, as spy satellites have seen steam coming out of it. On Monday North Korea increased tensions still further, by conducting a powerful underground nuclear test. It has also fired six short-range missiles in recent days. International response
Diplomats from the five permanent Security Council member countries - plus Japan and South Korea - have been meeting behind closed doors to discuss a new resolution against North Korea. Washington is calling for a quick and unified response that will make it clear to Pyongyang that there are consequences for its actions. But US State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said the door was still open to resume long-running six-party talks and that the US was looking at a "whole range of options". "We are thinking through complicated issues that require very careful consideration," said the US ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice. While the US and Japan are likely to favour a hard line against North Korea, Russia and China are more wary about pushing Pyongyang too far, analysts say. A few years ago there was real hope of reaching a settlement, when North Korea agreed in February 2007 to abandon its nuclear ambitions in return for aid and diplomatic concessions. But the negotiations stalled as it accused its negotiating partners - the US, South Korea, Japan, China and Russia - of failing to meet agreed obligations. | |||||
