The Korean news agency Yonhap is reporting that North Korea has placed surface-to-surface missiles (HY-2 Haiying, aka Silkworm) on launch pads in the Yellow Sea. Yonhap is also reporting that SA-2 surface-to-air missiles have been moved to frontline areas. This report came just hours before the joint United States-South Korean military maneuvers begin, with the USS George Washington's strike group arriving in the Yellow Sea. It also comes on a day in which South Koreans were again sent running to bunkers on Yeonpyeong island after North Korean artillery fire was detected (none of it landed on the island, and the evacuation order was lifted).
There's also multiple media reports that the mood within South Korea is one of being fed up with this dynamic, with protesters in the street calling for vengeance.
From the Associated Press:
The sound of new artillery fire from North Korea just hours after the U.S. and South Korea launched a round of war games in Korean waters sent residents and journalists on a front-line island scrambling for cover Sunday.
None of the rounds landed on Yeonpyeong Island, military officials said, but the incident showed how tense and uncertain the situation remains along the Koreas' disputed maritime border five days after a North Korean artillery attack decimated parts of the island and killed four South Koreans.
There's probably a 99% chance all of this blows over, and Kim Jung-il and his 25-year-old kid who's a four star General in the North Korean army get the attention they wanted & go back to doing whatever it is they do when not causing international incidents. That 1% chance of bad going to worse is the inherent danger situations like this have for escalation. All it takes is one overreaction, one mistake, one jag-off dictator pushing scared & angry people just a little too far, and things get kicked up a notch.
To show just how much class they have about the whole thing, today the North Koreans accused the South Koreans of using "human shields" to explain away their artillery attack on Yeonpyeong island. Because when you shell civilians, it's their fault they built their house in the path of your artillery.
From Reuters:
North Korea has placed surface-to-surface missiles on launch pads in the Yellow Sea, Yonhap news agency reported on Sunday, as the United States and South Korea began joint military exercises that have upset neighbor China.
The agency also said North Korea had moved surface-to-air missiles to frontline areas, days after it shelled a tiny South Korean island killing four people. The North's official KCNA news agency warned of retaliatory action if its territory is violated.
"We will deliver a brutal military blow on any provocation which violates our territorial waters," KCNA said.
According to Yonhap, a South Korean government source claims their fighter jets are being targeted as they fly near the Northern Limit Line (NLL).
According to BBC News, the US-South Korean drills are occurring about 125km (77 miles) south of the Northern Limit Line. According to Bloomberg News, Japan’s Prime Minister Naoto Kan has told his Cabinet to remain in Tokyo in case of "unexpected" developments.
From MSNBC:
Officials told NBC News that the maneuvers would not start until midafternoon as the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS George Washington had just arrived in the area to join the exercise. They added that no live-fire exercises are planned during the three-day war games. The George Washington, which carries 75 warplanes and has a crew of more than 6,000, will be accompanied by at least four other warships.
China has expressed displeasure with the exercises while North Korea earlier said the consequences could not be predicted.
South Korean President Lee Myung-bak told ministers and aides to be ready for further "provocation" by North Korea during the drill. "There is the possibility that North Korea may do some unexpected action, so please perfectly prepare against it through cooperation with the Korea-U.S. joint force," Lee was quoted by a spokesman as saying.
Pressure has been put on China to do something about its ally's behavior. The Chinese sent a senior official to Seoul on Saturday, and announced a North Korean official is being invited to Beijing.
From the N.Y. Times:
On Saturday, China stepped up its diplomatic efforts to cool tempers in the region, sending a senior diplomatic official to Seoul and conducting telephone diplomacy with Russia and Japan.
The state counselor in charge of foreign affairs, Dai Bingguo, on Saturday night made a previously unannounced visit to Seoul and met South Korea’s foreign minister, Kim Sung-hwan, according to statements by the Chinese and South Korean foreign ministries. The two conferred about the situation on the peninsula, according to the statements, which did not provide further details.
Also on Saturday, Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi telephoned his counterparts in Japan and Russia, according to a separate statement on the ministry’s Web site. "All sides involved should press both North and South Korea to maintain calm restraint, carry out dialogue and contact, and not carry out actions that will aggravate the dispute," Mr. Yang said, according to the statement. That phrasing could be interpreted as a sign that China is willing to exercise its influence on North Korea.
On Sunday, Xinhua news agency said that a top North Korean official, Choe Tae-bok, chairman of the Supreme People’s Assembly, will pay an official visit to China starting Tuesday at Beijing’s invitation.
The United States has hoped that China would use its leverage over North Korea to restrain it from any further attacks, but so far China has not rebuked the North’s leaders, at least in public. And when China did finally make a strong public statement late last week on the attack — the one warning against military actions in its economic zone — it directed its pique at the United States for the naval exercises.
The attack on Yeonpyeong island has already led to the sacking of the South Korean Defense Minister, and a shift in the rules of engagement to allow a faster response. However, according to multiple media reports, there's also been something of a shift among the South Korean population's mood.
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The South did shoot back, but many Koreans consider the limited response feeble compared with the hourlong artillery barrage on Tuesday, in which North Korea rained about 180 shells on the island, killing the civilians and two South Korean marines. The ferocity of the attack and the deaths of the civilians appear to have started a shift in South Koreans’ conflicted emotions about their countrymen in the North, and not just among those who were shot at.
After years of backing food aid and other help for the North despite a series of provocations that included two nuclear tests, many South Koreans now say they feel betrayed and angry. "I think we should respond strongly toward North Korea for once instead of being dragged by them," said Cho Jong-gu, 44, a salesman in Seoul. "This time, it wasn’t just the soldiers. The North mercilessly hurt the civilians." That is not to say that he or other South Koreans will really push for a South Korean strike; people south of the border are well aware that the North could devastate Seoul with its weapons.
But the sentiments reflect a change of mood in a country where people have willed themselves to believe that their brotherly ties to the North would override the ideological chasm between the impoverished Communist North and the thriving capitalist South. The attack seemed to challenge one of the underlying assumptions of a decade of inter-Korean rapprochement, which had slowed but not stopped under President Lee Myung-bak: that two nations’ shared Koreanness trumped political differences, making a return to cold war-era hostilities not only undesirable but also impossible.
"I never thought they would attack us people of the same race," said Hong Jae-soon, 55, a homemaker who fled Yeonpyeong with most of the island’s other 1,350 residents after the attack. She said she was in her kitchen peeling ginger to make kimchi, the spicy fermented vegetables that are both Koreas’ national dish, when she heard distant booms. As the roar got louder, and the ground began to shake, she ran outside and saw that a home four houses away from hers had been blown into rubble.
"We learned you cannot trust them," she said.