South Korea vows to make North pay for torpedo attack
President Barack Obama offered his full support for South Korea’s moves, and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton conferred with China — a veto-wielding permanent seat holder on the Security Council — on the next step in what she called a “highly precarious” security situation.
The March 26 sinking of the Cheonan in the Yellow Sea off the west coast was South Korea’s worst military disaster since the 1950-53 Korean War.
A torpedo fired from a North Korean submarine tore the ship in two, an international team of investigators concluded last week.
President Lee Myung-bak called the attack the latest in a series of provocations from the North, and aimed to strike Pyongyang financially by cutting trade with the country in desperate need of hard currency.
South Korea has been North Korea’s No 2 trading partner, behind China, and the measure will cost Pyongyang about $200 million a year, said Lim Eul-chul, a North Korea expert at South Korea’s Kyungnam University — a small but significant blow.
“We have always tolerated North Korea’s brutality, time and again. We did so because we have always had a genuine longing for peace on the Korean peninsula,” he said in a solemn speech to the nation from the halls of the country’s War Memorial.
“But now things are different. North Korea will pay a price corresponding to its provocative acts,” he said, calling it a “critical turning point” on the tense Korean peninsula, still technically in a state of war because the fighting ended in a truce, not a peace treaty.
Clinton said North Korea’s neighbours — including Pyongyang ally China, which has refrained from criticising its neighbour — understand the seriousness of the matter.
She would not say whether such action would include new international sanctions against the North.
“We are working hard to avoid an escalation of belligerence and provocation,” Clinton said.
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