SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea and the United States began joint naval exercises today that will include live fire and bombing drills as North Korea deployed missiles close to the Yellow Sea and warned that it will turn the region into “a merciless shower of fire” if its territory is violated.
Meanwhile, China, North Korea’s main ally and economic partner, seemed engaged in a flurry of weekend diplomacy aimed at reducing tensions. Two high-level Chinese officials, Dai Bingguo, who is the equivalent of the Chinese president’s national security adviser, and Wu Dawei, the chief nuclear negotiator, were in Seoul today for unscheduled talks with top officials, including South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak.
South Korean officials said the exercises, called in response to the North’s deadly artillery barrage last week of civilian-inhabited Yeonpyeong Island, began when the USS George Washington aircraft carrier strike group entered the exercise zone, along with South Korean warships. Officials said live firing would begin later in the day.
Tensions were high today as the sound of North Korean artillery briefly led to an emergency evacuation for the remaining two dozen or so civilian residents on Yeonpyeong, though no shells landed on the island.
Korea’s Yonhap News Agency quoted South Korean military sources saying North Korea had deployed Soviet-made SA-2 surface-to-air missiles to its west coast near the Yellow Sea, and placed longer-range surface missiles on launchpads on the northwest coast near the front line.
South Korean military officials said the deployments appeared aimed at any American or South Korean aircraft that might cross the “Northern Limit Line,” or the Yellow Sea maritime border dividing the Koreas.
North Korea, in a weekend statement, warned that the exercises could bring the region to “the brink of war.”
The North Korean regime in Pyong yang also tried over the weekend to blame the United States for sparking the crisis, saying the United States had sought a justification to increase its military presence in the region.
“No sooner had the Yeonpyeong incident occurred than the U.S. announced that it would stage joint naval exercises with the South Korean puppet forces with the nuclear-powered carrier George Washington involved in the West Sea of Korea as if it had been waiting for it to happen,” according to a commentary in the official Korean Central News Agency.
The United States and South Korea have said the exercises had been planned for a long time, but no date had been announced until the North’s attack on the island, which killed two marines and two civilians and wounded 18 others.
Choe Tae-Bok, the chairman of North Korea’s Supreme People’s Assembly, or parliament, planned to visit Beijing on Tuesday, according to China’s state-run Xinhua news agency.
