Tension rises over N. Korea's renewed sea border claim

By Kim Hyun & Sam Kim

SEOUL, Jan. 17 (Yonhap) -- Military tension escalated sharply along the inter-Korean border on Saturday as North Korea vowed to take an "all-out confrontational posture" against South Korea, just hours after it said it would hold onto its nuclear arms.

South Korea put its military on heightened alert, warning that armed clashes
might take place in disputed waters in the Yellow Sea, following naval skirmishes
there in 1999 and 2002 that left scores of soldiers killed or wounded on both
sides.
"Now that traitor (South Korean President) Lee Myung-bak and his group opted for
confrontation," said a spokesman for the chief of the General Staff of the
North's Korean People's Army, "our revolutionary armed forces are compelled to
take an all-out confrontational posture to shatter them."
Wearing a military uniform, the unnamed spokesman read the acerbic message in a
program aired by Pyongyang's official Korean Central Broadcasting Station. The
statement was also released in English by the North's Korean Central News Agency.
It was the first message from the North Korean army's General Staff in 10 years,
and was far more strongly-worded than the North's usual tirades against the
South.
Just hours earlier, North Korea's Foreign Ministry spokesman said Pyongyang may
not give up its nuclear weapons even if ties with Washington are normalized.
Pyongyang will terminate its atomic program only if there is no possibility the
U.S. will launch a nuclear attack against North Korea, he said. The message comes
three days before the inauguration of U.S. President-elect Barack Obama, who said
during his campaign he would be willing to meet with North Korean leader Kim
Jong-il to end the nuclear dispute.
The North's military spokesman accused South Korean naval vessels of routinely
intruding upon its maritime territory in the Yellow Sea. Seoul officials denied
that claim.
"There was no such occasion," said Kim Ho-nyoun, spokesman for Seoul's
Unification Ministry handling inter-Korean affairs.
The inter-Korean western sea border, known as the Northern Limit Line (NLL), was
unilaterally drawn by U.S.-led U.N. forces at the end of the 1950-53 Korean War.
North Korea disputes the NLL and insists it should be drawn further south.
"There will exist in the West Sea of Korea only the extension of the Military
Demarcation Line designated by the DPRK till the day of national reunification,
not the illegal 'Northern Limit Line,'" he said. DPRK is the acronym for the
North's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
The South Korean military responded swiftly. It asked the Army, the Navy and the
Air Force to remain on raised alert and asked the U.S. military to increase
reconnaissance using U-2 spy planes against North Korea, military officials said.
The presidential office Cheong Wa Dae held an emergency meeting and briefed Lee
on the North's statement, according to officials.
Pyongyang was widely expected to refrain from provocative behavior ahead of U.S.
President-elect Barack Obama's Jan. 20 inauguration to ensure smooth nuclear
negotiations with the U.S.
In an apparent message to Obama, North Korea said earlier Saturday that Pyongyang
will keep its nuclear capability until it feels safe from the U.S. nuclear
threat.
"Normalization of diplomatic relations and the nuclear issue are entirely
different issues," a spokesman for the North's foreign ministry said.
"We can live without normalized relations with the United States but can't live
without the nuclear deterrence. That is the reality of Korea today," he said.
Seoul analysts said North Korea is talking to the U.S., not South Korea, with its
two statements on Saturday. By raising military tension with Seoul, Pyongyang
wants to draw Washington's attention to push a stalled aid-for-denuclearization
deal forward, as the U.S. is currently preoccupied with its economic crisis and
Iran.
"Both the statements from the General Chief of Staff and from the Foreign
Ministry are a message to the United States," said Choi Jin-wook, a senior fellow
with the Korea Institute for National Unification, a state-run think tank.
"If North Korea does harm to the South at this moment, it doesn't help improving
its relations with the U.S.," he said.
Koh Yu-hwan, a North Korea studies professor at Seoul's Dongguk University, noted
the timing of the military warning.
"We should note that the statements are coming out just before the Obama
administration's inauguration," he said. "As for whether the military threat on
the South will materialize, we have to keep in mind that North Korea's focus is
improving relations with the U.S.."
Meanwhile, a U.S. expert said following a trip to Pyongyang that North Korea
claimed it has "weaponized" enough plutonium to make four or five nuclear
weapons.
"All of those I met said that North Korea has already weaponized the 30.8 kg of
plutonium listed in its formal declaration and that the weapons cannot be
inspected," Selig Harrison, a scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center
for Scholars, a policy institute in Washington D.C., told a news conference in
Beijing. He had just ended his five-day trip to Pyongyang.
Multilateral talks aimed at ending North Korea's nuclear weapons program are in
limbo. The latest round of the talks -- also involving South Korea, the U.S.,
China, Japan and Russia -- broke down due to a dispute over how to verify North
Korea's past nuclear activities.