South Korea Strengthens Its Military Presence On the Island Attacked By North
South Korea takes a more aggressive approach on its relation to the neighboring North Korea, deploying rocket launchers and extra artillery on the frontline border between the two nations.
The move occurs as the South promises the North on Monday it will pay if the Communist regime threatens its security again.
Witnesses say that more rocket launcher were spotted on the island, more soldiers and more howitzers.
More than that, at a certain time a loudspeaker broadcast announced a live-fire drill on Tuesday and asked the people to take shelter in the bunkers. The broadcast was then cancelled by another one that called it “wrong information.”
However, military sources maintained that the military drill had been actually prepared but then abandoned for reasons that remain unknown.
President Lee Myung-bak said, referring to the feeble response of his country to the attack a week ago, that South Korea will not make the same mistake twice.
The president came under hard criticism after the response the country provided to the North’s attack, and was forced to accept the resignation of defense minister, and appoint another.
The South Korean leader said that if the North repeats the attack he will make sure they pay a dear price for it. In the address to the nation on Monday, the first after the attacks, the president called the shelling “crime against humanity.”
Lee Myung-bak made no reference to China’s proposal to resume talks with the North in an attempt to find a way to solve the problem.
Analysts think this is a diplomatic way of dismissing the Chinese proposition, especially since the South believes that the Communist regime in Pyongyang will never accept to give up its nuclear program and that only international sanctions will force them to do it.
In this spirit, the U.S. ambassador in South Korea called for tighter sanctions against Pyongyang.
South Korea will invest next year 270 million dollars in developing weaponry to defend the islands that are close to the border with the North.
The joint military operations the U.S. Army and the South Korean Navy are conducting in the Yellow Sea brought the Korean peninsula to the brink of war, according to Pyongyang propaganda, and angered China, which considers Yellow Sea a zone of its influence.
China has also angered South Korea because it did not condemned the North’s attack.
Japan also refused to participate in the six-party direct talks, saying these cannot be held unless North Korea faces the implications of the attack on the South and of its nuclear development.
