By Jung Sung-ki
North Korea Tuesday threatened “powerful physical retaliation” if South Korea launches a naval exercise in the West Sea on Aug. 5 as scheduled.
The reaction comes as the South Korean military is scheduled to carry out the drill as a show of force after a North Korean submarine allegedly torpedoed the warship Cheonan in March, killing 46 South Korean sailors.
Seoul’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) immediately refuted the North’s demand, urging the North to admit its involvement in the Cheonan sinking and apologize for the attack.
“The naval exercise in the West Sea will be held as scheduled,” a JCS spokesman said. “The planned naval maneuver will be held within our maritime territory below the Northern Limit Line (NLL) and the nature of the exercise is purely defensive to strengthen our military’s defense posture.”
Earlier in the day, Pyongyang’s military command warned in a statement carried by the North’s official Korean Central News Agency (KNCA) that the planned drill by South Korea’s Navy amounts to an “undisguised military intrusion,” and the North will respond to it with physical retaliation.
"The Command of Forces of the Korean People's Army in the western sector of the front has made a decisive resolution to counter the reckless naval firing projected by the group of traitors with strong physical retaliation," it said.
The North routinely makes such threats in response to military exercises by the South. But the latest threat comes amid heightened tension on the Korean Peninsula in the wake of the March 26 sinking of Cheonan.
When the massive U.S.-South Korean drills in the East Sea started on July 26, North Korea vowed that it would further bolster its nuclear deterrence capabilities.
North Korea’s latest rhetoric also came a day after a senior U.S. official visited Seoul to fine-tune new sanctions on the communist regime to pressure it to take responsibility for the Cheonan incident and abandon its nuclear arms programs.
The North’s military repeated its old claim that the maritime border in the West Sea should be re-drawn further south of the current NLL.
North Korea has rejected recognizing the NLL drawn up by the United Nations Command at the end of the 1950-53 Korean War. The NLL has been a flash point for inter-Korean conflicts.
In 1999, South Korean ships sank their North Korean counterparts, killing at least 30 North Korean sailors and injuring 70 others. The North also lost about 10 naval vessels. Five South Korean ships were damaged and nine sailors were injured.
A similar naval gun exchange occurred last November near the NLL.