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Korea on a knife-edge as South freezes all trade
South Korea demands apology for torpedo attack by 'one of the most war-mongering nations on earth'
The always tense relationship between North and South Korea has escalated into a full-blown diplomatic emergency after South Korea imposed a trade ban on the Pyongyang regime as punishment for the sinking of the South's naval ship Cheonan, in which 46 sailors died eight weeks ago.
President Lee Myung-bak of South Korea has also ordered his army to re-start its "psychological warfare" campaign against Pyongyang. This includes broadcasting slogans from loudspeakers positioned along the border.
Along with a ban on North Korean warships entering its waters, and a demand that those who carried out the attack on the Cheonan on March 26 be punished, Lee had taken all possible steps short of full military action to force an apology out of Pyongyang.
"We have always tolerated North Korea's brutality, time and again," President Lee said in a national TV broadcast yesterday. "But now things are different. North Korea will pay a price corresponding to its provocative acts. Trade and exchanges between South and North Korea will be suspended."
Lee's tough line follows the discovery last week by international investigators of parts of the torpedo fired at the Cheonan. It carried markings that matched a North Korean design.
South Korea has announced the freeze on trade despite a threat from the North that it would go to war if sanctions were imposed, having dismissed the torpedo discovery as "fabrication".
North Korea earns about $280m a year from trading with the South, mainly from exporting seafood and making clothes for South Korean companies. Its impoverished people can ill afford a lengthy trade embargo.
President Lee's TV address effectively brought to an end the country's so-called "sunshine policy" towards the North. This was the diplomatic policy that chose to ignore the fact that the two countries have officially been at war ever since 1953, in favour of a more optimistic approach to aid and trade with Pyongyang.
Lee made it clear he did not seek a military confrontation. However, he described the North as "one of the most war-mongering nations on Earth" and insisted the South would invoke the right to defend itself if its neighbour took aggressive action.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who by chance has been visiting Beijing, urged China, the North's sole ally, to co-operate with the West on North Korea. So far, the Chinese have remained silent about the Cheonan affair. ·
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What planet are you on Neil? This country has nuclear weapons & you think they dont possess a spy submarine - wake up & smell the coffee boy. Do you honestly believe the north had nothing to do with this? Oh, there goes a pig flying across the skyline....
Who were the international experts, US government officials?
Is this another "Gulf of Tonkin" or "Weapons of mass destruction" incident?
But there is no evidence at all that N Korea blew-up the Chenoan. And it doesn't even possess any of the kind of spy-submarines that would have been needed. These allegations are empty yankee finger-pointing. Brought to you by the same liars who claimed there were WMD in Iraq.
Where would N Korea get these subs from? But there's a more likely cause for the explosion... at the time of the incident, S Korea was in the middle of naval War Games with the US Fleet. And we know the American ability to kill its own allies in "blue-on-blue" incidents. Just ask Matty Hull's relatives? The USA still denies they killed him, of course.