Pyongyang remains belligerent as tensions rise in Korea

AS SOUTH Koreans picked up the pieces after this week’s devastating artillery barrage from North Korea, which killed two civilians and two marines and heightened tensions in the bitterly divided peninsula, the North remained in belligerent mode.

“We [North Korea] will wage second and even third rounds of attacks without any hesitation if warmongers in South Korea make reckless military provocations again,” the North’s KCNA news agency quoted a statement from the military as saying.

The artillery assault was the heaviest attack by the North since the Korean War ended in 1953 and marked the first civilian deaths in an assault since the bombing of a South Korean airliner in 1987.

There were growing calls to punish North Korea for its latest military outrage, but its closest ally, China, called for calm, suggesting that the shock attack could end up as a tortuous negotiation process.

“China has always been committed to maintaining peace and stability on the Korean peninsula and opposes any threat of force,” prime minister Wen Jiabao said during a visit to Moscow.

China’s lukewarm response is sure to irritate the international community – even Russia has been critical of the artillery assault.

Beijing has always adopted an uncritical response to Pyongyang’s actions, however controversial, as the country’s only ally in the world.

Beijing has long propped up the Pyongyang leadership, worried that a collapse of the North could bring instability to its own borders, or even leave US troops at its borders, something China could not abide.

There has been some speculation that North Korea was responding to joint US-South Korea military exercises.“The current situation we are facing is severe and complicated,” he said after a meeting Russian president Dmitry Medvedev. “The international community should do more to ease the ongoing tension.”

As China is the only country with any remaining influence in North Korea, Mr Wen’s comments will be closely read for their broader significance.

Tuesday’s attack however is having dramatic repercussions within South Korea, where foreign minister Kim Tae-young resigned his position yesterday, following criticism within the country that South Korea’s response to the assault was too slow. President Lee Myung-bak has accepted his minister’s resignation.

North Korea fired a barrage of artillery shells at the island of Yeonpyeong off the peninsula’s west coast on Tuesday, killing four people and destroying dozens of houses.

Tensions between the two Koreas have been as high as they ever have in the years since the Korean War, which ended with an armistice and have left the peninsula one of the most politically fraught regions in Asia.

As Washington lays on the pressure to rein in North Korea, the Chinese are calling for a revival of the stalled six-party talks involving the two Koreas, Russia, China, Japan and the United States.

Seoul has said it will increase troop numbers on islands near North Korea after the bombardment, which caused a sharp spike in tension in the world’s fastest-growing region.