North Korea border guards kill five defectors to China: report

SEOUL: North Korean border guards, in a rare cross-border pursuit, shot dead five defectors and wounded two others who fled the reclusive state into China, a South Korean newspaper reported on Tuesday.

The Chosun Ilbo reported that North Korean border guards had never before shot at defectors once they had reached the Chinese side of the border, adding that guards could have been issued with new instructions for dealing with defectors.

The daily quoted a high-level source in Changbai in the Chinese province of Jilin as saying the seven had left Hyesan in Yanggang province and walked across the frozen Yalu River and reached the Chinese side on Dec. 14.

Five were shot dead by North Korean border guards who were in pursuit and two were wounded and taken to the North, it said.

Asian stocks up

Asian News: Asian stock markets rose Tuesday as tensions on the Korean peninsula eased a few notches.

Investors spent the previous day worried about possible North Korean retaliation against South Korean military drills on a frontline island that was shelled by the North last month. Instead, Pyongyang backed off threats to strike back and reportedly offered concessions on its nuclear program.Japan’s Nikkei 225 stock average climbed 1.5 percent to 10,370.53 after the Bank of Japan kept monetary policy unchanged at the current super loose setting after a key survey last week showed deteriorating business sentiment.Japanese exporters climbed, with Sony Corp. up 2.7 percent and Canon Inc. adding 1.6 percent.Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index added 1.4 percent to 22,966.08. South Korea’s Kospi advanced 0.8 percent to 2,037.09 and Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 was up 0.8 percent at 4,771.90.China’s Shanghai Composite Index jumped 1.8 percent to 2,904.30. Markets in Taiwan, India, and Singapore also rose.In New York Monday, low trading volumes and a lack of economic reports kept stocks confined to a narrow range Monday. Indexes finished mixed and bond yields were barely changed.The Dow Jones industrial average fell 13.78, or 0.1 percent, to 11,478.13. The broader Standard and Poor’s 500-stock index rose 3.17, or 0.3 percent, to 1,247.08. The Nasdaq composite index gained 6.59, or 0.3 percent, to finish at 2,649.56.

South Korea Raises Rhetoric Against the North

South Korea on Friday threatened to bomb North Korea if it tries a repeat of last week’s attack, raising its rhetoric after the United States warned of an “immediate threat” from Pyongyang.

Kim Kwan-jin, a retired general, was speaking at a parliamentary meeting confirming him as new defense minister, a day after U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said North Korea threatened the region and the world.

“If there are further provocations, we will definitely use aircraft to bomb North Korea,” Kim said when asked how he would respond to another attack after last week’s North Korean bombardment of an island near their disputed border, killing two South Korean marines and two civilians.

The North alone has more than 5,000 multiple-launch rockets pointed at the capital Seoul which, with its satellite cities, is home to some 25 million people. South Korea has about 490 combat aircraft.

For nearly 60 years, the two Koreas have faced each other across one of the world’s most heavily armed borders. They have never signed a peace treaty to end the 1950-53 Korean War.

US and South Korea Push Ahead With war Games

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.

As the rhetoric from North Korea escalated, with new warnings of a “merciless” assault if further provoked, a top Chinese official made a last-minute visit to Seoul to confer with South Korean President Lee Myung-bak.

Lee and State Councilor Dai Bingguo, a senior foreign policy adviser, discussed the North Korean attack and how to ease the tensions, according to Lee’s office. Dai also met with South Korean Foreign Minister Kim Sung-hwan on Saturday, the Foreign Ministry said.

Meanwhile, the chairman of North Korea’s Supreme People’s Assembly, Choe Thae Bok, was due to visit Beijing starting Tuesday, China’s official Xinhua News Agency said.

Washington and Seoul have urged China, North Korea’s main ally and biggest benefactor, to step in to defuse the situation amid fears of all-out war.

The Korean peninsula remains in a technical state of war because the 1950-53 war ended in a truce, not a peace treaty. Their border is one of the world’s most heavily fortified, guarded by troops on both sides.

However, North Korea disputes the maritime border drawn by U.N. forces at the close of the war, and considers the waters around Yeonpyeong Island — 50 miles (80 kilometers) from the South Korean port of Incheon but just 7 miles (11 kilometers) from the North Korean mainland — its territory.

The Koreas have fought three bloody naval skirmishes in the waters since 1999, as recently as a year ago. And eight months ago, a South Korean warship, which had been involved in one of those skirmishes, went down in an explosion, killing 46 sailors.

An international team of investigators concluded that a North Korean torpedo sank the ship. The two Koreas have remained locked in a standoff over that incident, with South Korea demanding a show of regret for the attack and North Korea denying any involvement.

Tuesday’s attack — on an island with a civilian population of 1,300 — marked a new level of hostility along the rivals’ disputed sea border. Two marines and two civilians were killed when the North rained artillery on Yeonpyeong Island in one of the worst assaults on South Korean territory since the Korean War.

The attack took place as North Korea carries out a delicate transfer of power from leader Kim Jong Il to a young, unproven son in what many see as the heir’s bid to win the military’s loyalty. It also may reflect Pyongyang’s frustration that it has been unable to force a resumption of stalled international talks on receiving aid in return for nuclear disarmament.

The attack also laid bare weaknesses in South Korea’s defenses against North Korea.

North Korea said Saturday that civilian deaths were “regrettable,” but blamed South Korea for staging military drills in the waters against Pyongyang’s warnings that it would consider such exercises a provocation.

Meanwhile, North Korea mounted surface-to-air SA-2 missiles on launch pads on a west coast base and aimed at South Koreean fighter jets flying near the western sea border, the Yonhap news agency reported, citing an unidentified South Korean government source.

South Korea’s military said it couldn’t confirm the deployments. An official at the Joint Chiefs of Staff said the North already deploys anti-ship missiles on its west coast bases.

The previously planned joint war games that U.S. and South Korea launched Sunday were sure to heighten the tensions.

Washington insists that the drills involving the nuclear-powered USS George Washington supercarrier are routine and were planned well before last Tuesday’s attack.

The exercises kicked off Sunday morning when ships from both countries entered the exercise zone, an official with South Korea’s joint chiefs of staff said on condition of anonymity, citing office rules.

However, a spokesman for the U.S. military in South Korea said U.S. ships were still steaming toward the area and that the drills would not officially begin until later in the day.

North Korea has expressed outrage over the Yellow Sea drills involving a U.S. nuclear-powered supercarrier, and issued a fresh warning Sunday.

“We will launch merciless counter-military strikes against any provocative moves that infringe upon our country’s territorial waters,” the North’s main Rodong Sinmun newspaper said in an editorial carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.

Sunday’s burst of artillery fire in North Korea appeared to be the second in as many days.

Officials were investigating the exact location of Sunday’s artillery fire, an official with South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said. He spoke on condition of anonymity, citing office rules.

S.Korea urges calm from Asiad athletes after attack

GUANGZHOU: South Korea has told its coaches and athletes at the Asian Games to maintain cordial relations with rivals from North Korea after the deadly artillery barrage on a border island.

All South Korean coaches were called to a meeting late Tuesday, Yonhap news agency said, hours after the communist North’s attack on Yeonpyeong island which killed two marines and injured 15 more along with three civilians.

“I told coaches that our athletes should just act normally around or with North Korean athletes,” said Lee Kee-Heung, head of the South Korean athletic delegation to the Guangzhou Games.

“We’re all here to play sports. We don’t need to react to the situation back home. This (Asiad) is a platform for sports.”

He also urged South Korean athletes not to harm their medal chances by getting distracted by events back home.

“If young athletes

US Expert Saw Hundreds of Centrifuges in North Korea

WASHINGTON: A U.S. nuclear scientist saw hundreds of centrifuges in North Korea this month, sources familiar with the matter said on Saturday, buttressing the case that Pyongyang has a uranium enrichment program giving it a second way to obtain fissile material for atomic bombs.

Washington has believed since 2002 that Pyongyang had such a program but the apparent sophistication of its effort could ignite fresh debate over how to deal with North Korea’s unpredictable leadership and whether to resume talks aimed at ending its nuclear ambitions.

North Korean officials told the expert, Siegfried Hecker of Stanford University, they had 2,000 centrifuges operating but the US team that visited the country was unable to verify that, said the sources who spoke on condition of anonymity.

“But it certainly looked like an operating facility (to the team),” one source said.

Another source said Hecker was “stunned” by how modern and sophisticated the uranium enrichment facility was at North Korea’s Yongbyon nuclear complex.

But Hecker was unable to spend enough time there to establish whether the plant was designed to produce only low-enriched uranium needed to make fuel for a power plant or the highly enriched uranium needed for bombs, he said.

The source said Hecker was told the facility was producing 3.5 percent enriched uranium, the level needed for a power plant. To produce bomb-grade fissile material, uranium must be enriched to more than 90 percent.

It was not immediately clear why North Korea showed Hecker the facility.

Separately, the U.S. State Department said Stephen Bosworth, an envoy responsible for policy toward North Korea, left on Saturday on a trip to South Korea, Japan and China for consultations on North Korean issues.

North Korea, which conducted nuclear tests in 2006 and 2009, is believed to have enough fissile material from its separate, plutonium-based nuclear program to make between six and 12 atomic bombs.

Even though it has exploded nuclear devices, Pyongyang has not shown it has a working nuclear bomb.

Still, its nuclear program is seen as a direct threat to U.S. allies Japan and South Korea as well as a proliferation risk given North Korea’s long history of selling missile technology abroad.

North Korea has said it wants to return to stalled aid-for-disarmament talks but Seoul and Washington have dismissed its pledges to denuclearize as insincere. The United States had demanded tangible but unspecified steps to show Pyongyang’s seriousness about abandoning its nuclear programs.

A third person familiar with the matter said confirmation of a uranium enrichment facility was likely to make any deal with North Korea more expensive should the talks resume.

Special Parade Held at 65th North Korean Anniversary

North Korea has begun three days of celebrations to mark 65 years since the founding of the country’s Communist Workers’ Party. On this occasion a special arrangement of a military parade was also organised.
The festivities, which culminate in a massive military parade in capital, Pyongyang, on Sunday, are not only to mark the anniversary of communist rule. North Korean officials are expected to use the weekend’s celebrations to declare the historic handover of power from ailing leader Kim Jong-il to his son and heir apparent, Kim Jong-un. Chiefs of all three armed forces also participated in this parade.

North Korea: Special parade held at 65th North Korean anniversary

North Korea has begun three days of celebrations to mark 65 years since the founding of the country’s Communist Workers’ Party. On this occasion a special arrangement of a military parade was also organised.
The festivities, which culminate in a massive military parade in capital, Pyongyang, on Sunday, are not only to mark the anniversary of communist rule. North Korean officials are expected to use the weekend’s celebrations to declare the historic handover of power from ailing leader Kim Jong-il to his son and heir apparent, Kim Jong-un. Chiefs of all three armed forces also participated in this parade.

North Korea vows to strengthen "nuclear deterrent"

UNITED NATIONS: North Korea should strengthen its “nuclear deterrent” in response to the threat posed by the United States, North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Pak Kil-yon said on Wednesday.

“As long as the U.S. nuclear aircraft carriers sail around the seas of our country, our nuclear deterrent can never be abandoned, but should be strengthened further,” he told the U.N. General Assembly. “This is the lesson we have drawn.” AGENCIES

S.Korea welcomes sanctions on North, offers aid

SEOUL: South Korea welcomed expanded US financial sanctions against North Korea on Tuesday, but made its first large-scale offer of aid to its destitute neighbour since the sinking of one of its warships in March.

President Barack Obama broadened financial sanctions on North Korea on Monday and froze the US assets of four North Korean citizens and eight firms in part to punish the diplomatically isolated state for the sinking of Cheonan corvette which killed 46 sailors.

US officials hope the measures, which target North Korean entities that trade in conventional arms and luxury products and that counterfeit US currency, will also sharpen pressure on the North’s leader Kim Jong-il to abandon his nuclear programmes.

Washington views the atomic capabilities of the North, which tested nuclear devices in 2006 and 2009, as a threat to its allies South Korea and

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