NKorea puts military on combat alert, warns of war

NUKEWARS

SKoreans stranded in NKorea after phone lines cut
Some 80 South Koreans were stranded in North Korea Monday and hundreds more cancelled trips the other way after Pyongyang effectively shut its border with Seoul, officials said. The North said it was switching off military phone and fax lines, which are used to approve border crossings, in protest at a joint US-South Korean military exercise which started Monday. It ordered its 1.2-million-member military to be fully combat-ready, saying the exercise was aimed at launching a "second Korean War."

"As an immediate measure we will enforce a more strict military control and cut off the north-south military communications" during the March 9-20 drill, an army spokesman for the North said. "It is nonsensical to maintain a normal communications channel at a time when the South Korean puppets are getting frantic with the above-said war exercises, levelling guns at fellow countrymen in league with foreign forces." Seoul's unification ministry said 726 people were unable to travel to the Kaesong joint industrial complex, built just north of the border as a symbol of reconciliation. Eighty others due to return home from Kaesong were blocked from returning.

"Our government regrets" the border measure, said ministry spokesman Kim Ho-Nyoun, urging the North to respect inter-Korean accords and stop raising tensions. "Our government urges North Korea to immediately retract its measure and guarantee smooth passage and communications," Kim said. Kim denied the 80 are being detained, saying the North's officials are awaiting orders on immigration matters from higher authorities. "It is necessary for us to wait and see the North's attitude." Truck traffic was also halted to the Seoul-financed Kaesong estate which opened in 2005. The South Korean firms at the estate truck raw materials northwards over the border, with finished products going the other way for sale in South Korea or overseas. "We cannot bring personnel and raw material in and out of Kaesong at the moment. We cannot bring back products already made in Kaesong either," Yoo Chang-Geun, vice chairman of a group of estate factory owners, told AFP. "If this situation continues for a prolonged period, businesses will be in serious trouble."

Companies have already been hit by growing costs, the global economic downturn and difficulties caused by inter-Korean tensions. The North has also been tightening regulations in recent weeks. Kaesong was seen as a landmark project, with the North providing cheap but skilled labour and Seoul supplying the investment and know-how. At the end of February about 39,000 North Koreans worked at 98 South Korean firms, producing items such as watches, clothes, shoes and kitchenware.

by Staff Writers
Seoul (AFP) March 9, 2009
North Korea put its military on combat alert Monday as US and South Korean troops began a major joint exercise, and warned that any attempt to block its upcoming satellite launch would spark a war.

The communist state also severed its last communications channel with South Korea for the duration of the 12-day exercise, which Pyongyang has branded a rehearsal for invasion.

Last week the North threatened South Korean civilian airlines using its airspace, forcing them to re-route flights.

The North Korean military described the exercise as "unprecedented in the number of the aggressor forces involved and in duration."

"The KPA (Korean People's Army) Supreme Command issued an order to all service persons to be fully combat-ready," it said in a statement carried by official media.

"A war will break out if the US imperialists and the warmongers of the South Korean puppet military hurl the huge troops and sophisticated strike means to mount an attack."

The North said it was switching off military phone and fax lines, which are used to approve border crossings, because it would be "nonsensical" to maintain normal channels during the drill.

Some 80 South Koreans due to return Monday from the Kaesong joint industrial estate -- built by Seoul in the North as a symbol of reconciliation -- were stranded there.

More than 700 others cancelled trips the other way, the unification ministry said. It expressed regret at the communications cut-off and urged Pyongyang to backtrack and stop raising tensions.

This year's exercise involves an aircraft carrier, 26,000 US troops and more than 30,000 South Koreans. Seoul and Washington say it is purely defensive.

It comes at a time of high cross-border tension and growing pressure on the North to drop plans to fire a rocket.

North Korea says it is preparing to launch a satellite, but both Seoul and Washington believe the real purpose is to test a long-range Taepodong-2 missile that could in theory reach Alaska.

The North's military General Staff warned it would retaliate "with prompt counter-strikes by the most powerful military means" for any attempt to intercept it.

"Shooting our satellite for peaceful purposes will precisely mean a war," the military said.

Japan warned last week that it is prepared to shoot down any rocket headed toward its territory, and US officials have said they have the capability to knock out any missile.

Analysts suspect the North is taking a tougher stance as it competes for US President Barack Obama's attention with other world hotspots.

It is also angry at South Korea's conservative President Lee Myung-Bak, who has scrapped his predecessors' policy of offering virtually unconditional aid to Pyongyang.

The US and South Korea say a launch for any purpose would breach a United Nations resolution passed after the last missile launch in 2006, the same year the North staged an underground nuclear test.

"Whether they describe it as a satellite launch or something else makes no difference, they would be in violation of UN Security Council Resolution 1718," the new US envoy for North Korea, Stephen Bosworth, said Monday.

He has been holding talks in Beijing, Tokyo and Seoul on ways to persuade the North to push ahead with a six-nation nuclear disarmament deal and to hold back from firing a rocket.

Bosworth said the five parties negotiating with Pyongyang strongly agree it would be "extremely ill-advised" for it to fire a rocket.

The nuclear talks, involving the two Koreas, the United States, Japan, Russia and China, are deadlocked by disputes over how the North's declared atomic activities should be verified.

"We are hopeful that we can see the resumption of the six-party process in the relatively near future," Bosworth told reporters after a day of talks with senior South Korean officials.

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NUKEWARS

NKorea rhetoric a threat, not US-SKorea wargames: US

Washington (AFP) March 9, 2009
The United States said Monday that northeast Asia is threatened by North Korea's "bellicose rhetoric" rather by than the annual US-South Korean military maneuvers.

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