President Lee says reconciliation with N. Korea top priority By Byun Duk-kun

SEOUL, Jan. 23 (Yonhap) -- South Korean President Lee Myung-bak Friday called on the military to be fully prepared to counter any provocation from North Korea while adding the nation's top priority is securing peace and reconciliation between the divided Koreas.

The call comes less than a week after the North's Korean People's Army (KPA) said
it would now take an "all-out confrontation posture" against the South.
"It would be best if we are able to maintain peace between the South and the
North and that the two reconcile with each other," Lee said in a phone call to
the commander of an front-line Army division.
"There should be no problems as long as our military maintains a perfect defense
posture," the president said during his phone call, made ahead of the Lunar New
Year, one of the country's biggest traditional holidays that falls on Monday.
In a separate phone call to the commander of a Navy unit deployed in the Yellow
Sea, the commander-in-chief again stressed the need to deter any aggression from
the communist nation, especially over the holiday weekend.
North Korea on Saturday said that from now on it would only recognize the
maritime border it set in the Yellow Sea, where the naval forces of the two
Koreas clashed in 1999 and 2002 due to the North's violation of the existing
border, known as the northern limit line (NLL). The clash left dozens of
casualties on both sides.
"There will exist in the West (Yellow) 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," a spokesman for the KPA's
General Staff said in a statement carried by the North's Korean Central News
Agency. DPRK stands for the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, the North's
official name.
The two Koreas remain divided, a result of the 1950-53 Korean War that ended only
with an armistice, not a peace treaty.
bdk@yna.co.kr
(END)