SEOUL, South Korea – South
Korea conducted live-fire military drills near its disputed sea
boundary with North Korea on Monday despite Pyongyang's threat to
respond with a "merciless" attack -- a threat it did not immediately
make good on.
Analysts said North Korea was unlikely to
respond with more than words because it is focusing on internal
stability two months after the death of leader Kim Jong Il. North Korea
is also days away from its first nuclear disarmament talks with the U.S.
since Kim's death.
Washington and North Korea's neighbors are
closely watching how Kim Jong Un, Kim Jong Il's son and successor,
navigates strained ties with rival South Korea and a long-running
standoff over the country's nuclear weapons programs. In another
potential point of tension, U.S. forces will be conducting annual
military exercises with South Korea over the next few months.
South Korea's drills took place Monday in an
area of the Yellow Sea that was the target of a North Korean artillery
attack in 2010 that killed four South Koreans and raised fears of a
wider conflict. North Korea didn't threaten similar South Korean firing
drills in the area in January, but it called the latest exercise a
"premeditated military provocation" and warned it would retaliate for an
attack on its territory.
A North Korean officer said in an interview
Sunday with an Associated Press staffer in Pyongyang that North Koreans
would respond to any provocation with "merciless retaliatory strikes."
North Korea is fully prepared for a "total
war," and the drills will lead to a "complete collapse" of ties between
the Koreas, the North's Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of
Korea said in a statement carried Monday by the official Korean Central
News Agency.
Such rhetoric has been typical of North Korean officials in the past.
Later Monday, South Korean troops on five
islands near the disputed sea boundary fired artillery into waters
southward, away from nearby North Korea, a Defense Ministry official
said on condition of anonymity, citing department rules. South Korea
reported no action by North Korea following the drills, which ended
after about two hours.
North Korea's military maintained increased
vigilance during Monday's drills, though Seoul saw nothing suspicious, a
South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff officer said on condition of
anonymity, citing department rules.
South Korean military officials said they
were ready to repel any attack. Residents on the front-line islands were
asked to go to underground shelters before the drills started,
according to South Korea's Defense Ministry and Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Analysts said the threats allow Pyongyang to
show its anger over what it sees as a violation of its territory, but
that an immediate attack was unlikely during what is a a delicate time
for inter-Korean and U.S.-North Korean relations, and for internal North
Korean politics.
"South Korea's military would have
immediately responded this time, and that's something that North Korea
can't afford" during its transfer of power to Kim Jong Un, said Yoo
Ho-yeol, a professor at Korea University in South Korea.
The North's threat appeared aimed at
mustering internal support or could be the result of top military
officers showing their loyalty to Kim Jong Un, Yoo said.
The North knows that raising tensions ahead
of nuclear talks with the United States won't be advantageous, said
Cheong Seong-chang, an analyst at the private Sejong Institute in South
Korea.
The Korean Peninsula has been technically at
war for about 60 years. The maritime line separating the countries was
drawn by the U.S.-led U.N. Command without Pyongyang's consent at the
close of the 1950-53 Korean War, which ended with a truce, not a peace
treaty. North Korea routinely argues that the line should run farther
south.
Relations between the Koreas plummeted
following the 2010 shelling of front-line Yeonpyeong Island, seven miles
(11 kilometers) from North Korean shores, and a deadly warship sinking
blamed on Pyongyang. North Korea has flatly denied its involvement in
the sinking, which killed 46 South Korean sailors.
Kim Jong Un's handling of North Korea's military and diplomacy will come into sharper focus in the next several weeks.
The United States and North Korea will have
important nuclear disarmament talks Thursday -- the third round of
bilateral talks since last summer and the first since Kim Jong Il's Dec.
17 death. They are aimed at restarting six-nation aid-for-disarmament
negotiations on North Korea's nuclear program.
The North pulled out of those negotiations
in early 2009 but has said it is willing to restart the six-party talks,
which also include China, Japan, Russia and South Korea. But the U.S.
and its allies are demanding that the North first demonstrate its
sincerity in ending its nuclear weapons program.
Additionally, a series of military exercises
between the United States and its ally Seoul will extend over more than
two months. Seoul and Washington say their long-planned annual drills
are defensive in nature, but North Korea calls them preparation for an
invasion.
South Korea began joint anti-submarine
drills Monday with the United States, but the training site is farther
south from the disputed sea boundary, South Korean military officials
said. About 28,500 U.S. troops are stationed in South Korea as what U.S.
and South Korean officials call deterrence against North Korean
aggression.
South Korean and U.S. troops will start 12
days of largely computer-simulated war games next week, and two months
of field training drills in early March.
Early Monday, the powerful Political Bureau
of the Central Committee of North Korea's ruling Workers' Party
announced it would convene a special political conference in mid-April
to "glorify" the late leader and to rally around his son.
The last time such a conference was held was
in September 2010, when Kim Jong Un was named to a high-ranking party
military post in the first public confirmation that he was being groomed
to succeed his father.
The conference could wrap up the North's
power succession process, analysts said, with Kim Jong Un possibly
promoted to general secretary of the Workers' Party, the ruling party's
top job and one of the country's highest positions.
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