Results 1 to 6 of 6

Thread: Report: N. Korea fires on S. Korea, killing 1 and injuring 15

  1. #1
    Moderator kidd's Avatar
    Join Date
    Nov 2002
    Location
    Somewhere Out There
    Posts
    13,111

    Default Report: N. Korea fires on S. Korea, killing 1 and injuring 15

    Source: http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/as...pt=T1&iref=BN1

    Report: N. Korea fires on S. Korea, killing 1 and injuring 15

    By the CNN Wire Staff
    November 23, 2010 -- Updated 0743 GMT (1543 HKT)

    Seoul, South Korea (CNN) -- North Korea fired artillery toward its tense western sea border with South Korea on Tuesday, killing at least one South Korean soldier, the Yonhap news agency reported.
    Two civilians and 13 other South Korean military personnel were injured, with three of the soldiers seriously hurt, Yonhap said.
    At least 200 rounds of artillery hit an inhabited South Korean island in the Yellow Sea after the North started firing about 2:30 p.m. local time, Yonhap said.
    South Korea's military responded with 80 rounds of artillery and deployed fighter jets to counter the fire, the report said.
    The South Korean army also raised its alert condition, the report said.
    Images of plumes of smoke were quickly broadcast on Yonhap television from the island of Yeonpyeong, but it was not immediately clear what the artillery had hit.
    The island has a total of about 1,300 residents, a fisherman who lives on the island told Yonhap.
    Some residents started fleeing for the South Korean mainland, which is about 145 kilometers (90 miles) away. Other residents were seeking shelter at schools.
    The South Korean government immediately called an emergency meeting of its security ministers.
    The North Korean fire came as the South's military conducted routine drills in waters off the island, which is about 10 kilometers (6 miles) from the North.
    Last edited by kidd; 11-23-10 at 04:07 AM.
    什麼是朋友?朋友永遠是在你犯下不可原諒錯誤的時候,仍舊站在你那邊的笨蛋。~ 王亞瑟

    和諧唔係一百個人講同一番話,係一百個人有一百句唔同嘅說話,而又互相尊重 ~ - 葉梓恩

  2. #2
    Moderator kidd's Avatar
    Join Date
    Nov 2002
    Location
    Somewhere Out There
    Posts
    13,111

    Default

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-11818005

    'Artillery fire' on Korea border

    North Korea has fired artillery shells across its western maritime border, prompting return fire from South Korea, officials say.

    Dozens of the shells landed on a South Korean island, from which plumes of smoke are rising. At least four soldiers are said to have been hurt.

    South Korea has issued its highest non-wartime alert in response.

    Correspondents say this is one of the most serious incidents between the two since the Korean War in the 1950s.

    Top leaders are meeting in an underground bunker in Seoul over the incident, Reuters news agency reported.

    The incident comes days after North Korea revealed it had a modern uranium enrichment plant - potentially giving it a second route to a nuclear weapon.

    Earlier, the US ruled out more denuclearisation talks while Pyongyang continued to work on the facility.

    'Illegal firing'

    South Korean officials said artillery rounds landed on Yeonpyeong island, near the disputed inter-Korean maritime border to the west of the Korean Peninsula.

    "A North Korean artillery unit staged an illegal firing provocation at 1434 PM (0534 GMT) and South Korean troops fired back immediately in self-defence," a defence ministry spokesman told AFP.

    A resident on the island told the agency that dozens of houses were damaged, while television pictures reportedly showed plumes of smoke rising above the island.

    "Houses and mountains are on fire and people are evacuating. You can't see very well because of plumes of smoke," a witness on the island told YTN television station.

    "People are frightened to death and shelling continues as we speak," the witness said.

    South Korea had deployed fighter jets to the island, Yonhap news agency said.

    This western maritime border has been the scene of numerous clashes between the two Koreas in the past.

    In March, a South Korean warship went down near the border with the loss of 46 lives.

    International investigators say a North Korean torpedo sank the ship, although Pyongyang denies any role in the incident.

    Since then relations between the two neighbours - who have not signed a peace treaty since the 1950-53 Korean War - have been very tense.

    source: BBC News
    Last edited by kidd; 11-23-10 at 04:20 AM.
    什麼是朋友?朋友永遠是在你犯下不可原諒錯誤的時候,仍舊站在你那邊的笨蛋。~ 王亞瑟

    和諧唔係一百個人講同一番話,係一百個人有一百句唔同嘅說話,而又互相尊重 ~ - 葉梓恩

  3. #3
    Senior Member
    Join Date
    Sep 2004
    Posts
    5,405

    Default

    It is noted that the firing is illegal. Does this mean that it is not ordered by North Korea government? Or one need to inform South Korea before firing?

  4. #4
    Moderator kidd's Avatar
    Join Date
    Nov 2002
    Location
    Somewhere Out There
    Posts
    13,111

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by wkeej View Post
    It is noted that the firing is illegal. Does this mean that it is not ordered by North Korea government? Or one need to inform South Korea before firing?
    I think it being illegal doesn't mean it's not ordered by government, but, that it's against certain international law.
    什麼是朋友?朋友永遠是在你犯下不可原諒錯誤的時候,仍舊站在你那邊的笨蛋。~ 王亞瑟

    和諧唔係一百個人講同一番話,係一百個人有一百句唔同嘅說話,而又互相尊重 ~ - 葉梓恩

  5. #5
    Moderator kidd's Avatar
    Join Date
    Nov 2002
    Location
    Somewhere Out There
    Posts
    13,111

    Default

    I wonder if this is the cause of the attack.

    http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37309788...s-asia-pacific

    U.S. backs South Korea in punishing North
    Plan military display of force in peninsula 'to deter future aggression'


    5/24/2010 5:19:12 PM ET

    SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea won U.S. support Monday for slashing trade to North Korea and vowed to haul its communist neighbor before the U.N. Security Council for a torpedo attack that sank a South Korean warship and killed 46 sailors.
    U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said he expects the Security Council to take action against North Korea, calling the evidence that the North was responsible "overwhelming and deeply troubling."
    The U.S. and South Korea are planning two major military exercises off the Korean Peninsula in a display of force intended "to deter future aggression" by North Korea, the White House said.
    President Lee Myung-bak laid out the economic and diplomatic measures aimed at striking back at the impoverished North, including halting some trade and taking the regime before the Security Council.
    International investigators concluded last week that a torpedo from a North Korean submarine tore apart the warship Cheonan on March 26 in the Yellow Sea off the west coast in one of South Korea's worst military disasters since the 1950-53 Korean War.
    Lee said it was another example of "incessant" provocation by North Korea, including a 1983 attack in Myanmar on a South Korean presidential delegation that killed 21 people, and the bombing of an airliner in 1987 that claimed 115 lives.
    "We have always tolerated North Korea's brutality, time and again. We did so because we have always had a genuine longing for peace on the Korean peninsula," Lee said in a solemn speech at the War Memorial.

    "But now things are different. North Korea will pay a price corresponding to its provocative acts," he said, calling it a "critical turning point" on the tense Korean peninsula, still technically in a state of war because the fighting ended in a truce, not a peace treaty.

    Big trading partner

    The truce prohibits South Korea from waging a unilateral military attack, so Seoul sought to strike at Pyongyang's faltering economy.
    Despite their rivalry, South Korea has been Pyongyang's No. 2 trading partner with $1.68 billion in trade in 2009, or about 33 percent of the North's total, according to the Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency. China is North Korea's biggest trading partner, with $2.68 billion in commerce last year, the agency said.
    South Korea buys shellfish, seafood products, zinc, sand, coal and other products from the North, but those imports will be halted, and North Korean cargo ships will be denied permission to pass through South Korean waters, Unification Minister Hyun In-taek said.
    Those measures will cost North Korea about $200 million a year, said Lim Eul-chul, a North Korea expert at South Korea's Kyungnam University.
    But the biggest source of trade — a joint factory park in the North Korean border town of Kaesong where 110 South Korean firms employ about 42,000 North Koreans — will stay open, Hyun said.
    The Obama administration endorsed Lee's demand that "North Korea immediately apologize and punish those responsible for the attack, and, most importantly, stop its belligerent and threatening behavior." Seoul can continue to count on the full backing of the United States, it said.
    "U.S. support for South Korea's defense is unequivocal, and the president has directed his military commanders to coordinate closely with their Republic of Korea counterparts to ensure readiness and to deter future aggression," the White House said.
    Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman did not give a date for the exercises but said they will be in the "near future."
    The U.S. has 28,500 troops in South Korea — a major sore point for the North — as well as 47,000 troops in Japan.
    U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was in Beijing conferring with China on a coordinated response. She would not say whether that might include new international sanctions against the North.
    "We are working hard to avoid an escalation of belligerence and provocation," Clinton said. "This is a highly precarious situation that the North Koreans have caused in the region."

    'All-out war'

    North Korea has steadfastly denied any role in the ship's sinking. On May 20, naval spokesman Col. Pak In Ho told broadcaster APTN in Pyongyang that any punishment would mean "all-out war."
    On Monday, the powerful National Defense Commission criticized Lee's speech as a "clumsy farce," North Korea's official Korean Central News Agency said.
    At the U.N., Ban — a former South Korean foreign minister — said he shares in the international outrage over the sinking of the Cheonan.
    "The evidence laid out in the joint international investigation report is overwhelming and deeply troubling. I fully share the widespread condemnation of the incident," Ban told reporters. "I am confident that the council ... will take measures appropriate to the gravity of the situation."
    China, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the U.S. have been trying to persuade North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons in talks that Pyongyang quit last year, and Ban said it was "particularly deplorable" the attack occurred while those negotiations are stalled.
    Pyongyang disputes the maritime border drawn by U.N. forces at the close of the war, and the Koreas have fought three skirmishes there, most recently in November.
    South Korea's military will resume blaring anti-North Korean propaganda back over the border, a sensitive practice suspended in 2004 amid warming ties.
    Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama suggested the heightened tension between the Koreas helped shape his decision to break a campaign promise and keep a key U.S. Marine base in Okinawa, where about half the U.S. troops are stationed.
    什麼是朋友?朋友永遠是在你犯下不可原諒錯誤的時候,仍舊站在你那邊的笨蛋。~ 王亞瑟

    和諧唔係一百個人講同一番話,係一百個人有一百句唔同嘅說話,而又互相尊重 ~ - 葉梓恩

  6. #6
    Senior Member jadebunny9's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2002
    Location
    Hoppingland
    Posts
    2,321

    Default

    This was bound to happen, sooner or later. You can't expect the most heavily fortified borderline in the world to sit there peacefully forever. =/

Similar Threads

  1. Replies: 6
    Last Post: 03-03-09, 03:00 AM
  2. Japan and Korea - Must go places
    By nancie in forum Travel and Food
    Replies: 7
    Last Post: 08-19-08, 09:28 AM
  3. Korea
    By patricia n in forum Travel and Food
    Replies: 1
    Last Post: 09-22-07, 02:57 AM
  4. Korea Secret Agency
    By Sunlight_zero36 in forum Japanese/Korean Dramas
    Replies: 5
    Last Post: 10-08-06, 02:22 PM

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •