S. Korea Cancels Live Fire War Games
The New York Times reports:
On the heels of South Korea’s threat to force the North to “pay a dear price for further aggression, ” the country’s military appeared to step back from its confrontational stance and canceled live-fire artillery drills on an island in the Yellow Sea attacked by North Korea a week ago.
Still, high-profile joint exercises between the South and the United States are under way within 125 miles of the island, a show of force meant to warn North Korea but that has drawn warnings from both the North and China.
The prospect of the South Korean live-fire drills — scheduled for Tuesday but canceled within four hours of the announcement — had been sharpening tensions on a peninsula on tenterhooks after the North’s artillery attack last week on a garrison island that is also home to about 1,350 civilians, mainly fishermen. The attack killed two South Korean marines and two civilians, and wounded 16 people.
North Korea blamed the South for provoking the attack by firing at it from another garrison island lying in waters disputed by the two sides. The South, which returned fire, insisted it had been firing only test shots and that none were in territory it recognized as the North’s. The United States announced the date of the joint exercises as an immediate response. China — which the United States, South Korea and other countries hoped would act to calm the North — has so far focused more publicly on warning the United States not to operate in waters it claims. It was not immediately clear whether the exercises lie within that zone, 200 nautical miles from the Chinese coast.
Navy authorities on the shelled island, Yeongpyeong, warned residents by loudspeaker on Monday afternoon that they should move to bomb shelters by 9:30 a.m. Tuesday morning because live-fire drills would take place at 10 a.m.
But Monday night, they that announced no firing would take place. An official at the Joint Chiefs of Staff declined to explain the shift, saying only that the exercise “will be conducted at an appropriate time.”
South Korea’s military has come under intense criticism over the past week for not responding more forcefully to the North Korean bombardment of Yeongpyeong, which sits in disputed waters just eight miles from the North Korean coast.
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