WASHINGTON — South Korea’s president convened an emergency national-security meeting today, a day after an official report concluded that North Korea was responsible for the deadly sinking of a naval patrol ship.
North Korea, for its part, spoke of war for a second straight day, while U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was on the way to the region and tensions on the Korean Peninsula were expected to dominate her agenda.
South Korea accused North Korea on Thursday of sinking the patrol ship Cheonan with a torpedo in late March in what was the deadliest attack on the South since the Korean War ended in 1953.
While the U.S. has vowed to defend South Korea — and has 28,500 troops there to prove it — it doesn’t want to provoke new hostilities or spark chaos in the region.
“There’s no interest in seeing the Korean Peninsula explode,” said P.J. Crowley, State Department spokesman.
