N. Korea Touts Nuclear Clout as China Urges Talks

SEOUL - North Korea boasted Nov. 20 of running "thousands" of nuclear centrifuges, a week after launching a deadly artillery attack on South Korea, as China pressed for six-nation crisis talks.

State media in the North, which has already tested two atomic bombs made from plutonium, said "many thousands of centrifuges" are operating to enrich uranium at a new plant that it claims is for peaceful energy purposes.

The country first disclosed the new plant to U.S. experts less than two weeks before its artillery assault, which killed two civilians and two marines on South Korea's Yeonpyeong island near the disputed Yellow Sea border.

Experts and senior U.S. officials fear the plant could easily be configured to make weapons-grade uranium.

Analysts say the nuclear revelation and artillery attack appeared coordinated to pressure Washington and Seoul into resuming dialogue and aid, and possibly to bolster the credentials of leader-in-waiting Kim Jong-Un.

For a third day, the U.S. and South Korean navies staged war games far south of the border involving 11 ships, air power and 7,300 personnel.

South Korea is separately strengthening artillery and troop numbers on front-line islands near the tense frontier. It will hold more drills next week close to the border, though not near Yeonpyeong, the Yonhap news agency said.

The North's state media blasted the naval drill, calling it provocative and war-mongering. "We have full deterrence to destroy our enemies at once," said cabinet newspaper Minju Chosun. "If the U.S. and South Korean enemies dare to fire one shell in our territory and sea territory, they will have to pay for it."

Citing a statement from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Yonhap said more live-fire exercises would take place from December 6-12, including near Daechong island close to the frontier.

China has refused publicly to condemn its ally for the shelling, instead suggesting emergency consultations among envoys to the stalled six-nation talks on the North's nuclear disarmament.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said Nov. 30 it was imperative "to bring the issue back to the track of dialogue and consultation" as soon as possible.

The White House, which had already dismissed such talks as a "PR activity" unless Pyongyang moderates its activities, said that China had an "obligation" to press North Korea to end its "belligerent behavior".

"The Chinese have a duty and obligation" to impress "on the North Koreans that their belligerent behavior has to come to an end," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters.

Japan's foreign minister has also faulted China's proposal.

South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak, in a toughly worded speech Nov. 29, did not mention China's suggestion in what some saw as an implicit rejection.

"We should recognize that [South Korea] is confronting the world's most belligerent group," he told a cabinet meeting Nov. 30.

Almost 100 South Korean marine veterans landed on Yeonpyeong island on Nov. 30, vowing to defend it, ferret out spies - and feed abandoned dogs.

"Execute Kim Jong-Il, Jong-Un," read a banner they erected after arriving by ferry, in reference to the North's leader and heir apparent.

Elsewhere, activists sent balloons with anti-Pyongyang leaflets, DVDs and one-dollar bills floating into the North across the heavily fortified frontier, urging people to rise up against the hard-line regime.

With the nuclear disclosure and the bombardment, the North's leaders "demonstrated their ability to create trouble more or less with impunity", North Korea expert Andrei Lankov wrote in a commentary.

Diplomatic efforts were continuing, however. Seoul's Foreign Ministry said its minister Kim Sung-Hwan would attend a Kazakhstan summit of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe on Dec. 1-2 where he was expected to meet U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

And two top North Korean officials arrived in Beijing on Nov. 30, South Korean and Japanese media said.

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Top Chinese Leader Meets With N. Korea Official

BEIJING - China's top legislator held talks with his North Korean counterpart on Dec. 1 and said Beijing would maintain friendly ties with Pyongyang, state media said, amid high tensions in the region.

The meeting, broadcast on China's state television, is the first reported contact between senior Chinese and North Korean leaders since Pyongyang stunned the world last week with a deadly artillery strike on a South Korean island.

 

"To continuously consolidate and develop friendly and cooperative Sino-North Korean ties is the unswerving strategic policy of the Chinese party and government," Wu Bangguo told his North Korean counterpart Choe Thae-Bok.

Choe, chairman of North Korea's Supreme People's Assembly, is on an official visit to China that will end Dec. 4. Wu and Choe made no mention of the current tense situation in the comments broadcast on state television.

North Korea's shelling on Nov. 23 left four people dead and led to increased tensions in the region.

The U.S. and South Korea responded to the incident by staging a major joint show of naval strength intended to deter Pyongyang from repeating last week's artillery bombardment.

China, meanwhile, has come under growing international pressure to step in forcefully to restrain the unpredictable regime in Pyongyang but has so far refrained from joining world criticism of its ally.

Media reports have said that Kim Yong-Il, the head of the international department of North Korea's ruling Workers' Party, is also in Beijing but there has been no official confirmation of the visit.

According to other unconfirmed reports, China's top foreign policymaker Dai Bingguo is due to visit North Korea this week.

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Obama Pledges to Defend South Korea

Associated Press

WASHINGTON -- President Obama on Tuesday pledged the United States would stand "shoulder to shoulder" with South Korea after what the White House branded a provocative, outrageous attack by North Korea on its neighbor. Its options limited, the U.S. sought a diplomatic rather a military response to one of the most ominous clashes between the Koreas in decades.

South Korea found the burned bodies Wednesday of two islanders killed in a North Korean artillery attack, marking the first civilian deaths in the incident and dramatically escalating the tensions in the region's latest crisis.

The South Korean Coast Guard pulled the bodies of two men, believed in their 60s, from a destroyed construction site on the tiny island of Yeonpyeong near the disputed maritime border with North Korea.

"South Korea is our ally. It has been since the Korean war," Obama said in his first comments about the North Korean shelling of a South Korean island early Tuesday. "And we strongly affirm our commitment to defend South Korea as part of that alliance."

Working to head off any escalation, the U.S. did not reposition any of its 29,000 troops in the South or make other military moves after North Korea fired salvos of shells into the island, setting off an artillery duel between the two sides.

The president, speaking to ABC News, would not speculate when asked about military options.

Obama called South Korean President Lee Myung-bak later Tuesday night, saying the U.S. would work with the international community to strongly condemn the attack that killed the two South Koreans and injured many more, the White House said.

The White House said the two presidents agreed to hold combined military exercises and enhanced training in the days ahead to continue the close security cooperation between the two countries.

Obama assured Lee that "the United States stands shoulder to shoulder with our close friend and ally, the Republic of Korea," the White House statement said.

"President Obama said that North Korea must stop its provocative actions, which will only lead to further isolation, and fully abide by the terms of the armistice agreement and its obligations under international law," the statement said.

The U.S. has relatively few options when dealing with the Pyongyang government. Military action is particularly unappealing, since the unpredictable North possesses crude nuclear weapons as well as a huge standing army. North Korea exists largely outside the system of international financial and diplomatic institutions that the U.S. has used as leverage in dealing with other hostile countries, including Iran.

North Korea has also resisted pressure from its major ally, China, which appears to be nervous about the signs of instability in its neighbor.

"We strongly condemn the attack and we are rallying the international community to put pressure on North Korea," Obama said in the ABC interview, specifically citing the need for China's help. Obama said every nation in the region must know "this is a serious and ongoing threat."

An administration official said Tuesday evening that U.S. officials in Washington and in Beijing were appealing strongly to China to condemn the attack by arguing that it was an act that threatened the stability of the entire region, not just the Korean peninsula. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates phoned South Korea's defense minister to express sympathy for the deaths of two of the South's marines in the artillery shelling of a small South Korean island and to express appreciation "for the restraint shown to date" by the South's government, a Pentagon spokesman said.

Obama called North Korea's action "just one more provocative incident" and said he would consult with Lee on an appropriate response.

In his phone call to South Korea's defense minister, Gates said the U.S. viewed recent attacks as a violation of the armistice agreement that ended the Korea War in 1953, and he reiterated the U.S. commitment to South Korea's defense, said Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell.

Obama was awakened at 4 a.m. Tuesday with the news. He went ahead with an Indiana trip focused on the economy before returning to the White House after dark.

State Department spokesman Mark Toner said the U.S. would take a "deliberate approach" in response to what he also called provocative North Korean behavior. At the same time, other administration officials, speaking on condition of anonymity to describe the emerging strategy, said the White House was determined to end a diplomatic cycle that officials said rewards North Korean brinksmanship.

In the past, the U.S. and other nations have sweetened offers to North Korea as it has developed new missiles and prototype nuclear weapons. North Korea is now demanding new one-on-one talks with the United States, which rejects that model in favor of group diplomacy that includes North Korea's protector, China.

"We're not going to respond willy-nilly," Toner said. "We believe that it's important that we keep a unified and measured approach going forward."

Both Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill accused North Korea of starting the skirmish.

The violence comes as the North prepares for a dynastic change in leadership and faces a winter of food and electricity shortages. It is the latest in a series of confrontations that have aggravated tensions on the divided peninsula.

The incident also follows the North's decision last week to give visiting Western scientists a tour of a secret uranium enrichment facility, which may signal an expansion of the North's nuclear weapons program. Six weeks ago, North Korean leader Kim Jong Il anointed his youngest son, Kim Jong Un, as his heir apparent.

The administration official said the U.S. did not interpret North Korea's aggression as a desire to go to war, but as yet another effort to extract concessions from the international community.

Pentagon spokesman Col. Dave Lapan said no new equipment or personnel have been relocated to South Korea, while Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz seemed to shrug off the latest incident as something that Seoul can handle on its own.

"The North Koreans have undertaken over time a number of provocations that have manifested themselves in different ways," Schwartz said.

The USS George Washington carrier strike group will join South Korean naval forces in the waters west of the Korean peninsula Nov. 28-Dec. 1 to conduct air defense and surface warfare readiness training that had been planned well before Tuesday's attack, the White House said.

The artillery exchange was only the latest serious incident between the two nations. In March, a South Korean naval ship, the Cheonan, exploded and sank in the Yellow Sea, killing 46 sailors. South Korea accused the North of torpedoing the vessel; the North denied the allegation.

In August, the South Korean military reported that the North had fired 110 artillery rounds into the Yellow Sea near the disputed sea border but said the shells fell harmlessly into North Korean waters.

South Korean officials said Tuesday's clash came after Pyongyang warned the South to halt military drills near the small South Korean island of Yeonpyeong.

When Seoul refused and began firing artillery into the water near the disputed sea border, the North bombarded Yeonpyeong, which houses South Korean military installations and a small civilian population.

Recent joint U.S.-Korean naval exercises and strenuous denunciations of the North may only have provoked the regime in Pyongyang. Some experts say the secretive regime may be trying to promote Kim Jong Un as a worthy successor who, like his father, is capable of standing up to the U.S.

"I think it may be all wrapped in this succession planning, in the way the North is looking at it," said Robert RisCassi, a retired Army general who commanded U.S. forces in Korea from 1990-93.

The U.S.-South Korea exercises also angered China. Beijing is regarded as the key to any long-term diplomatic bargain to end North Korea's nuclear program and reduce tensions on the peninsula.

But U.S. officials say the North's motives and internal politics are opaque and sometimes appear inconsistent.

"I don't know the answer to any question about North Korea that begins with the word 'why,' " Gates told reporters Monday.

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North Korea Tries to Justify Attack

Associated Press

YEONPYEONG ISLAND, South Korea -- North Korea accused South Korea of using civilians as human shields around artillery positions on an island attacked by the North, seeking to justify a bombardment that killed four South Koreans and sent tensions soaring.

The comments Saturday came on the eve of U.S.-South Korean war games in the Yellow Sea that have enraged the North and worried neighboring China, and after the South Korean marine commander vowed revenge at a funeral for two marines killed in the barrage.

Tuesday's attack on Yeonpyeong Island, which houses military bases and tiny fishing communities, also killed two civilians in one of the worst artillery attacks on South Korean territory since the 1950-53 Korean War.

North Korea's state news agency said that although "it is very regrettable, if it is true, that civilian casualties occurred on Yeonpyeong island, its responsibility lies in enemies' inhumane action of creating a 'human shield' by deploying civilians around artillery positions."

The North said its enemies are "now working hard to dramatize 'civilian casualties' as part of its propaganda campaign, creating the impression that the defenseless civilians were exposed to 'indiscriminate shelling' all of a sudden from the" North.

South Korea was conducting artillery drills Tuesday from the island, located just 7 miles (11 kilometers) from North Korea's mainland, but fired away from the mainland.

The North said it warned South Korea to halt the drills on the morning of the attack, as part of "superhuman efforts to prevent the clash to the last moment."

The North said that Sunday's planned U.S.-South Korean war games showed that the United States was "the arch criminal who deliberately planned the incident and wire-pulled it behind the scene."

The South Korean commander, Maj. Gen. You Nak-jun, said the South's retaliation would be a "thousand-fold" as dignitaries and relatives laid white flowers at an altar during Saturday's funeral.

As protesters in Seoul demanded their government take sterner action against North Korea, the North issued new warnings against the war games scheduled to start Sunday with a U.S. nuclear-powered aircraft carrier in the Yellow Sea.

The North called the games an "unpardonable provocation" and warning of retaliatory attacks creating a "sea of fire" if its own territory is violated. The comments ran on North Korea's state-run Uriminzokkiri website a day after the North's warnings that the peninsula was on the "brink of war."

China, under pressure from the U.S. and South Korea to rein in its ally Pyongyang, urged both sides to show restraint while Washington played down the belligerent rhetoric, noting that the weekend war games were routine and planned well before last week's attack.

"The pressing task now is to put the situation under control and prevent a recurrence of similar incidents," Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi told U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton by phone, according to the ministry's website.

The North's artillery fire Tuesday destroyed civilian homes as well as military bases on Yeonpyeong Island in a major escalation of their sporadic skirmishes along the disputed sea border. The attack - eight months after a torpedo sank a South Korean warship, killing 46 sailors - laid bare Seoul's weaknesses in defense 60 years after the Korean War.

North Korea does not recognize the maritime border drawn by the U.N. at the close of the three-year war in 1953, and considers the waters around Yeonpyeong Island, just 7 miles (11 kilometers) from its shores, as its territory.

The heightened animosity between the Koreas comes as the nuclear-armed North undergoes a delicate transition of power from leader Kim Jong Il to his young, inexperienced son Kim Jong Un, who is in his late 20s and is expected to eventually succeed his ailing father.

Tuesday's attack came days after North Korea revealed a new uranium enrichment program that could improve its ability to make and deliver nuclear weapons, sending the message that new regime is as tough and volatile as ever and highlighting the urgency of restarting disarmament talks with the North.

South Korea's government, meanwhile, struggled to recoup from the attacks, replacing is defense minister Friday.

About former 70 special forces troops, wearing white head bands, scuffled with riot police in front of the Defense Ministry to protest what they called the government's weak response to the attacks, pummeling the riot troops' helmets with wooden stakes and spraying fire extinguishers.

Several hundred police pushed back with shields.

Elsewhere in Seoul activists held a peaceful, but noisy, rally to denounce North Korea.

China's foreign minister met with the North Korean ambassador to Beijing, Chinese state media said - an apparent effort to trumpet China's role as a responsible actor, and placate the U.S. and the South. China has expressed mild concern about the impending war games, in contrast to its strong protests over earlier rounds.

"The Chinese government is trying to send Pyongyang a signal that if they continue to be so provocative, China will just leave the North Koreans to themselves," said Zhu Feng, director of Peking University's Center for International and Strategic Studies.

China is impoverished North Korea's biggest benefactor and one of its only allies.

In Washington, the Pentagon played down any notion that the weekend maneuvers with South Korea - set to include the USS George Washington supercarrier - were a provocation.

"We have exercised there regularly," Capt. Darryn James, a Defense Department spokesman in Washington, said Friday. "And all of these exercises are in international waters."

President Lee Myung-bak ahas ordered reinforcements for the 4,000 troops on Yeonpyeong and four other Yellow Sea islands, as well as top-level weaponry and upgraded rules of engagement.

Most of the islanders fled to the mainland after Tuesday's hail of artillery set off fierce blazes that destroyed many of their communities. It will take six months to two years for island communities to rebuild, disaster relief official Kim Sang-ryul said.

Soldiers assembled toilets Saturday for temporary shelters being built on the island by teams of relief workers.

In Seongnam, near Seoul, South Korea's prime minister and marine commander joined some 600 mourners attending the funeral for the two dead marines at a packed gymnasium at a military hospital.

As a brass band played somber music, they placed chrysanthemums - a traditional mourning flower - before framed photographs of the two men. One marine's mother fell forward in her seat in grief.

"Our marine corps ... will carry out a hundred- or thousand-fold" retaliation against North Korea for Tuesday's attack, said You, the marine commander. He did not elaborate.

Passers-by paused at Seoul's main train station to watch funeral footage on a big screen.

"Once the enemy attacks us, it is our duty to respond even more strongly," said student Jeon Hyun-soo, 19. "The South Korean people want this."

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