S.Korea lays to rest marines killed in N.Korea attack
by Frank Zeller
SEOUL, Nov 27, (AFP): South Korea laid to rest Saturday two marines
killed in North Korea’s artillery strikes, on the eve of massive naval
war games with the United States that have angered Pyongyang and its
ally Beijing.
At a sombre funeral attended by political leaders, top military brass
and tearful relatives, hundreds of uniformed troops commemorated the
marines killed along with two civilians in the attack on a frontline
island Tuesday.
“We will certainly avenge your deaths,” Marine commander Lieutenant
General Yoo Nak-Joon said at the ceremony for Sergeant Suh Jung-Woo, 22,
and Private Moon Kwang-Wook, 20, held in a packed hall at a military
hospital near Seoul.
The emotional ceremony came amid the worst crisis in decades on the
divided Korean peninsula, triggered by North Korea’s bombardment of the
small border island of Yeonpyeong, located near their flashpoint
maritime border.
Nuclear-powered carrier the USS George Washington and its battle
group were heading for waters west of the Korean peninsula for four days
of exercises from Sunday, which have also angered China, North Korea’s
main ally.
Washington stressed that the Yellow Sea manoeuvre is “defensive in
nature”, was planned before North Korea’s attack, and is not aimed
against China.
But the United States also says that its display of naval firepower
will act as a “deterrent” to the volatile regime of Kim Jong-Il, which
has kept the region on edge for years with its nuclear and long-range
missile tests.
China has resisted taking sides in the worst flare-up in decades
between the Koreas, only generally urging calm after the attack, in
which South Korean forces returned artillery fire at North Korean
coastal positions.
Beijing was more outspoken in its opposition to the US-South Korean
drills.
“We hold a consistent and clear-cut stance on the issue,” China’s
foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei said in a statement Friday.
“We oppose any party to take any military actions in our exclusive
economic zone without permission,” it said, referring to the sea area
that stretches 200 nautical miles (370 kilometres) from a country’s
shores.
China’s Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi spoke with US Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton and his South Korean counterpart Friday on the tense
situation on the Korean peninsula, the ministry said without giving
details.
The Pentagon stressed that “this exercise is not directed at China”.
“These operations are defensive in nature and designed to strengthen
deterrence against North Korea,” said spokesman Darryn James on Friday.
North Korea has justified its attacks — the first shelling of
civilians since the 1950-53 Korean War — as retaliation after South
Korea in a drill lobbed shells into what the North considers its own
coastal waters. Pyongyang condemned, in the typically strong rhetoric of
its state media, the naval exercises between the “US imperialists and
south Korean puppet war-like forces” and warned it would attack if its
sovereignty is violated.
“The situation on the Korean Peninsula is inching closer to the brink
of war due to the reckless plan of those trigger-happy elements to stage
again the war exercises targeted against the DPRK,” the state news
agency said Friday, using the country’s official name, the Democratic
People’s Republic of Korea.
The international community has been at a loss over how to deal with
North Korea, which has also been blamed for the sinking of a South
Korean warship in March in a suspected submarine torpedo attack that
killed 46 sailors.
Japan’s parliament Friday condemned the Tuesday shelling as “an
outrageous act of violence” which “the international community cannot
overlook.”
US President Barack Obama has vowed to stand “shoulder-to-shoulder”
with its ally South Korea — but both face the difficult choice between a
soft response, which they fear may encourage more provocations from
Pyongyang, and a tougher response, which carries the risk of military
escalation.
Defence strategists have warned of a nightmare scenario of
conventional, chemical, biological and nuclear warfare that may claim a
million lives.
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