South Korea prepares for first anniversary of Cheonan sinking

Preparations are underway for military drills to mark the Cheonan anniversary

With the first anniversary of the sinking of South Korean warship approaching, South Korea and their US allies are preparing to mark the date with what might be seen as a rather provocative gesture: major live-fire military drills.

The South Korean corvette Cheonan was sunk on 26th March last year. A Seoul-led international investigation blamed North Korea for the attack, a claim which Pyongyang has denied.

Seoul and the US have been carrying out annual drills since late February. They completed computerised war games on 10th March, but joint field training will continue throughout March and April.

They are currently in the middle of a three day joint military amphibious logistic support exercise in the West Sea that ends Thursday 24th March. Large-scale maritime maneouvers in the East, West and South Seas will take place from Friday to Sunday to mark the first anniversary of the sinking of the Cheonan. Live-fire drills will also be carried in the West and South Seas on Saturday, the day of the sinking.

North Korea sees the drills as a rehearsal for invasion, and consistently protests about them. North Korea disputes the UN-established maritime border in the West Sea (also known as the Yellow Sea) and objects to the south carrying out live fire drills in territory it considers to be its own.

North Korea has also recently accused US troops of trespassing into the Demilitarized Zone and has said that South Korea would have to take responsibility for action resulting from the 'provocations', including 'human damage', according to the southern Korea Herald. The north's military has apparently sent a notice to the south, claiming that some 100 US troops made 50 trespasses into the area from 1-8th March, without any prior notification about their entry.

Another issue causing tensions between the two is that of southern activists and North Korean defectors ballooning anti-north leaflets into northern territory. According to the Korea Herald, a group plans to launch propaganda leaflets on Friday or Saturday this week from the frontier island of Paekryong, despite Pyongyang's threats of artillery retaliation.

They plan to drop some 200,000 leaflets containing news of the Arab uprisings and calling for the overthrow of Kim Jong-Il's regime.

The North Korean military has urged South Korea to halt what it calls 'psychological warfare' immediately and have threatened retribution.

Tensions between the two neighbours have been high since the sinking of the Cheonan a year ago. US-South Korea naval drills in disputed waters in November led to the north firing artillery at Yeonpyeong island, killing four.

The two sides are still technically at war, having never resolved the 1950-3 dispute, and South Korea's continual military action in what it knows to be disputed waters is certainly not helping to reduce tensions. Military talks between the two sides in early February ended in failure.

Sources: Korea Herald, Xinhua, ABC News

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South Korea begins military exercises despite North Korean warnings

Anti-war demonstrators in South Korea, 28th February

South Korea and the US have begun large-scale military exercises on Monday 28th February, despite North Korean warnings that it could trigger all-out war on the peninsula.

Every year South Korea and the US carry out training drills, and commanders insist they are purely defensive. About 12,800 US troops and 200,000 South Korean soldiers and reservists will take part.

The drills will last 11 days and will involve computer war games and live-fire exercises. The aim of the drills is to prepare South Korea for an attack by the North. It is also a rehearsal for emergency deployments of US forces in the event of a sudden attack on South Korea.

The last time South Korea and the US carried out training drills, in November 2010, North Korea reacted to live-fire exercises taking place in disputed waters by firing artillery shells at Yeonpyeong island, killing four.

The drills continued after the incident, raising tension on the divided peninsula to the highest level in years. Tension has been high since March 2010 when a South Korean warship was sunk, killing all 46 sailors on board. A Seoul-led international investigation blamed North Korea, a charge which Pyongyang denies.

Hours after the exercises started, North Korea warned of nuclear war.

"It's an anti-national scheme aimed at prolonging the stage of confrontation and tension to realise a plot to start a northward invasion," North Korea's main Rodong Sinmun newspaper said in a commentary carried by the official Korean central news agency. "The danger of a nuclear war on the Korean peninsula is deepening."

On Sunday, North Korea said that if provoked, its military would turn Seoul into a 'sea of flames' and would start a full-scale war with 'merciless' counterattacks.

South Korean officials dismissed Pyongyang's position. "Denouncing these kinds of drills as an aggression and provocation won't be a help to South-North Korea relations at all," Chun Hae-sung, a spokesman for the South Korean unification ministry, told reporters.

Not everyone in the South supports the drills, however. On Monday, about 20 anti-war activists rallied near a joint force command near Seoul, urging the South and the US to immediately halt the drills and resume talks with the North Korea.

North Korea has repeatedly pushed for talks, but when military officers from both sides met earlier this month, they failed to make any progress and a date for the next round of talks was not set.

The tension has led to conservative forces in South Korea calling for the redeployment of US tactical nuclear weapons. The White House coordinator for arms control and weapons of mass destruction, proliferation and terrorism, Gary Samore, said he believed the US would say yes if the South Korean government officially requested the redeployment.

The White House immediately countered by saying the US has no plans to bring tactical nuclear weapons back to the South, saying Washington continues to support a non-nuclear peninsula.

Another issue between the countries is Southern activists' distribution of leaflets into the North. Two and a half million leaflets were floated into the North in a balloon earlier this month. The leaflets carried messages ridiculing North Korean leader Kim Jong Il and calling for people to rise up against the government. The balloons also carried news of the Middle East uprsings. On 27th February, North Korea threatened to fire into the South if the propaganda balloon campaign was not halted.

The two countries are still technically in a state of war, as the 1950-3 Korean War has never officially finished. The land border between the two neighbours, the Demilitarised Zone, is along the 38th parallel.

The maritime border is the UN-designated Northern Limit Line, which Pyongyang believes restricts their access to marine territory. Indeed, it gives them a 3-mile territorial sea, even though the international norm is 12 miles. Since 1999, the North has been arguing in favour of a more southerly 'West Sea Military Demarcation'.

The military exercises that were carried out in November took place in this disputed area, and therefore it was unsurprising that the North reacted. It is not yet clear if this latest round of exercises will also take place in the area.

Sources: The Guardian, BBC News, Voice of America, The Korea Herald

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