Z-Koreaans marineschip gezonken; de gevolgen voor de regio

[Lex]

..... grote school ?

:lol:

[Laurens]

Bestaan er eigenlijk al systemen die op grote schaal artillerie-shells kunnen onderscheppen.

Laser, kogelregen de lucht in, of zoiets?

[Lex]

North Korea fires artillery rounds in Yellow Sea

(CNN) -- North Korea fired more than 100 artillery rounds Monday on its side of the border with South Korea in the Yellow Sea, South Korea's Defense Ministry said.

The North fired 10 artillery rounds between 5:30 and 5:33 p.m. local time (4:30 to 4:33 a.m. ET) and 100 rounds between 5:55 and 6:14 p.m. (4:55 to 5:14 a.m. ET), the ministry said.

The shells landed on the North Korean side of the Northern Limit Line, the disputed border between the two nations in the Yellow Sea, the ministry said. The South Korean military issued a loudspeaker warning to Northern forces, which did not respond, according to the ministry.

South Korea began a major naval exercise last week in the Yellow Sea, the largest since 46 South Korean sailors died in March in the sinking of a South Korean warship.

A South Korean investigation determined that North Korea was responsible for the sinking of the warship, the Cheonan, but Pyongyang has vehemently denied it.

However, North Korea said it would "react with strong physical retaliation to the anti-submarine drill to be staged by the group of traitors in the West Sea," according to the official Korean Central News Agency.

On Sunday, news reports said a South Korean fishing boat in the Sea of Japan and its seven crew members were being held by North Korea. State-run media in Pyongyang reported that the crew was "detained," but few other details were available.

By the CNN Wire Staff
August 9, 2010 -- Updated 1102 GMT (1902 HKT)

[Lex]

North Korea 'fires artillery into Yellow Sea'

North Korea has fired shells into the Yellow Sea near its disputed maritime border with the South, according to South Korean reports.

North Korea fired 10 artillery rounds at about 1730 local time (0830 GMT) into its own waters.

It comes on the last day of a huge naval exercise by Seoul, which went ahead despite warnings of retaliation from the North.

BBC News,
9 August 2010 Last updated at 10:07 GMT

[Lex]

ze zijn lekker bezig daar in die regio. Kans op verdere escalatie wordt zo natuurlijk niet kleiner.

Eea was verwachtbaar nadat Z.Korea op 5 augustus een grootsscheepse oefening is begonnen valkbij het gebied waar ROK Cheonan is vergaan.

[Lex]

Spanning Korea's loopt op na actie marine

SEOUL - De toch al gespannen relatie tussen Noord- en Zuid-Korea is zondag nog verder onder druk komen te staan.

De Zuid-Koreaanse kustwacht bevestigde berichtgeving van persbureau Yonhap over een actie van de marine van Noord-Korea tegen een vissersschip met aan boord vier Zuid-Koreanen en drie Chinezen.
Het vaartuig en de bemanning zouden in handen zijn van het bewind in Pyongyang, de hoofdstad van Noord-Korea.

Het schip raakte eerder vermist op de Japanse Zee, na vertrek uit een haven in Zuid-Korea.

© ANP
Uitgegeven: 8 augustus 2010 12:58

[Lex]

 South Korea begins massive military drill

South Korea has launched its biggest-ever anti-submarine exercises, the military says, despite warnings of retaliation from the North.

Some 4,500 personnel are taking part in five days of drills in the Yellow Sea, near the disputed maritime border.

The South is making a show of strength amid continuing anger over the sinking of one of its warships in March.

Seoul says a North Korean torpedo sank the Cheonan, but Pyongyang denies this and says the drills are a provocation.

Forty-six South Korean sailors were killed when the Cheonan went down in the Yellow Sea on 26 March.

'Fully prepared'
The latest drills, which follow a joint US-South Korean military exercise, will involve 29 ships and 50 planes.

Although the Ministry of Defence says the ships will stay clear of the disputed west coast sea boundary, marines stationed on islands close to the border will conduct live-fire exercises.

But military officials said that the guns would face south and described the exercises as "defensive" in nature.

"The focus of the exercises is to strengthen our response to the enemy's asymmetric provocations and also our joint operations capabilities," an official at the Joint Chiefs of Staff told Yonhap news agency.

"We will not tolerate any kind of provocations by the enemy, and the drills will allow us to be fully prepared for combat."

In North Korea's official media, a statement attributed to military leaders called the exercises a "direct military invasion aimed at infringing upon the DPRK's [North Korea's] right to self-defence".

Military leaders "made a decisive resolution to counter the reckless naval firing projected by the group of traitors with strong physical retaliation", the statement said.

Last month, the North threatened nuclear retaliation over joint US-South Korea naval exercises, but these passed without incident.

The disputed Yellow Sea border has long been seen as a flashpoint and there have been a number of clashes there in the past.

The boundary was drawn by the UN at the end of the Korean War in the 1950s - and North Korea does not recognise it.

The US and South Korea plan to hold more military drills in the coming months - a move that could raise tensions with China.

Beijing has refused to blame Pyongyang for the sinking of the Cheonan.

It opposed the decision to hold exercises in the Yellow Sea, urging against any action that could exacerbate regional tensions, and has also held its own military exercises in recent days.

BBC News,
5 August 2010 Last updated at 06:33 GMT

[Lex]

 North Korea threatens to retaliate against South Korea over its planned naval drills

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea's military threatened Tuesday "strong physical retaliation" against South Korea's planned naval drills near their disputed sea border and warned civilian ships to stay away from the area.

South Korea plans to hold five-day naval drills in the Yellow Sea, including near the border, beginning Thursday in response to the deadly March sinking of a South Korean warship blamed on North Korea.

North Korea vehemently denies involvement in downing the 1,200-ton Cheonan, and has demanded its own investigators be allowed to visit South Korea to examine the results. Seoul has rejected the North's repeated requests.

The North "made a decisive resolution to counter the reckless naval firing projected by the group of traitors with strong physical retaliation," the North's military said in a notice carried by Pyongyang's official Korean Central News Agency.

The North's military also warned all civilian ships to stay away from areas near the sea border.

The North's military denounced South Korea's planned drills as political provocations aimed at keeping the sea border — the scene of deadly skirmishes between the two sides in 1999, 2002 and last year — as is.

South Korea's Defense Ministry officials were not immediately available for comment.

The western maritime boundary has long been considered a flash point between the two Koreas, because the North does not recognize a line the United Nations unilaterally drew at the end of the 1950-53 Korean War.

Last month, South Korea and the United States held naval drills in the East Sea off the coast of the Korean peninsula to warn the North that further provocations will not be tolerated.

The North had threatened to respond to the joint military exercises with powerful nuclear deterrence, though there was no sign of unusual North Korean military activity during the drills.

Pyongyang routinely accuses the U.S. and South Korea of staging military drills as a rehearsal for an attack on North Korea. Washington and Seoul say the exercises are purely defensive and they have no intention of invading the North.

Associated Press
- August 02, 2010

[Lex]

Doubts surface on North Korea's role in ship sinking

Some in South Korea dispute the official version of events: that a North Korean torpedo ripped apart the Cheonan.

Reporting from Seoul

The way U.S. officials see it, there's little mystery behind the most notorious shipwreck in recent Korean history.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton calls the evidence "overwhelming" that the Cheonan, a South Korean warship that sank in March, was hit by a North Korean torpedo. Vice President Joe Biden has cited the South Korean-led panel investigating the sinking as a model of transparency.

But challenges to the official version of events are coming from an unlikely place: within South Korea.

Armed with dossiers of their own scientific studies and bolstered by conspiracy theories, critics dispute the findings announced May 20 by South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, which pointed a finger at Pyongyang.

They also question why Lee made the announcement nearly two months after the ship's sinking, on the very day campaigning opened for fiercely contested local elections. Many accuse the conservative leader of using the deaths of 46 sailors to stir up anti-communist sentiment and sway the vote.

The critics, mostly but not all from the opposition, say it is unlikely that the impoverished North Korean regime could have pulled off a perfectly executed hit against a superior military power, sneaking a submarine into the area and slipping away without detection. They also wonder whether the evidence of a torpedo attack was misinterpreted, or even fabricated.

"I couldn't find the slightest sign of an explosion," said Shin Sang-chul, a former shipbuilding executive-turned-investigative journalist. "The sailors drowned to death. Their bodies were clean. We didn't even find dead fish in the sea."

Shin, who was appointed to the joint investigative panel by the opposition Democratic Party, inspected the damaged ship with other experts April 30. He was removed from the panel shortly afterward, he says, because he had voiced a contrary opinion: that the Cheonan hit ground in the shallow water off the Korean peninsula and then damaged its hull trying to get off a reef.

"It was the equivalent of a simple traffic accident at sea," Shin said.

The Defense Ministry said in a statement that Shin was removed because of "limited expertise, a lack of objectivity and scientific logic," and that he was "intentionally creating public mistrust" in the investigation.

The doubts about the Cheonan have embarrassed the United States, which will s begin joint military exercises Sunday in a show of unity against North Korean aggression. On Friday, an angry North Korea warned that "there will be a physical response" to the maneuvers.

Two South Korean-born U.S. academics have joined the chorus of skepticism, holding a news conference this month in Tokyo to voice their suspicions about the "smoking gun:" a piece of torpedo propeller with a handwritten mark in blue ink reading "No. 1" in Korean.

"You could put that mark on an iPhone and claim it was manufactured in North Korea," scoffed one of the academics, Seunghun Lee, a professor of physics at the University of Virginia.

Lee called the discovery of the propeller fragment five days before the government's news conference suspicious. The salvaged part had more corrosion than would have been expected after just 50 days in the water, yet the blue writing was surprisingly clear, he said.

"The government is lying when they said this was found underwater. I think this is something that was pulled out of a warehouse of old materials to show to the press," Lee said.

South Korean politicians say they've been left in the dark about the investigation.

"We asked for very basic information: interviews with surviving sailors, communication records, the reason the ship was out there," said Choi Moon-soon, an assemblyman with the Democratic Party.

The legislature also has not been allowed to see the full report by the investigative committee, only a five-page synopsis.

"I don't know why they haven't released the report. They are trying to cover up small inconsistencies, and that has cost them credibility," said Kim Chul-woo, a former Defense Ministry official who is now an analyst with the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses, a government think tank.

A military oversight body, the Board of Inspection and Audit, has accused senior naval officers of lying and concealing information.

"Military officers deliberately left out or distorted key information in their report to senior officials and the public because they wanted to avoid being held to account for being unprepared," an official of the inspection board was quoted as telling the South Korean newspaper Chosun Ilbo.

The Cheonan, a 1,200-ton corvette, sank the night of March 26 about 12 miles off North Korea. The first report issued by Yonhap, the official South Korean news agency, said the ship had been struck by a torpedo, but soon afterward the story changed to say the ship sank after being grounded on a reef.

The military repeated that version for days. The audit board found that sailors on a nearby vessel, the Sokcho, who fired off 35 shots with a 76-millimeter cannon around the time of the sinking, were instructed to say they'd been shooting at a flock of birds, even though at first they had said they'd seen a suspected submarine on radar.

On April 2, as Defense Minister Kim Tae-young was testifying before the National Assembly, a cameraman shooting over his right shoulder managed to capture an image of a handwritten note from the president's office instructing him not to talk about North Korean submarines.

Such inconsistencies and reversals have fueled the suspicions of government critics. U.S. officials, however, say the panel's conclusion is irrefutable.

Rear Adm. Thomas J. Eccles, the senior U.S. representative on the panel, said investigators considered all possibilities: a grounding, an internal explosion, a collision with a mine. But they quickly concluded that the boat was sunk by a bubble-jet torpedo, which exploded underneath the vessel and didn't leave the usual signs of an explosion, he said.

"The pattern of damage was exactly aligned with that kind of weapon," Eccles said in a telephone interview. "Torpedoes these days are designed to drive underneath the target and explode. They use the energy of their explosion to make a bubble that expands and contracts. It is designed to break the back of the ship."

Pyongyang, meanwhile, denies involvement in the sinking and calls the accusation against it a fabrication.

South Koreans themselves appear to be confused: Polls show that more than 20% of the public doesn't believe North Korea sank the Cheonan.

Wi Sung-lac, South Korea's top envoy for North Korean affairs, says the criticism from within has made it difficult to get China and Russia on board to punish Pyongyang for the attack.

"They say, 'But even in your own country, many people don't believe the result,' " Wi said.

Los Angeles Times
8:13 PM PDT, July 24, 2010

[Elzenga]

Men spreekt over een "nucleaire afschrikking"....dat betekent volgens mij, dat men mogelijk nucleair reageert als Noord-Korea zou worden aangevallen. Daar is het regime blijkbaar bang voor en men vreest blijkbaar dat de oefening de voorbode is van zo'n aanval. Dan men direct dreigt men nucleaire wapens lijkt mij een teken van zwakte. Blijkbaar is het regime er niet gerust op dat een conventionele verdediging voldoende is en worden "vijanden" Zuid-Korea en de VS er nog eens op gewezen dat er ook een nucleaire optie is.

[Enforcer]

Als NK dat doet, worden ze zelf zonder nukes weggevaagd. Een loze schreeuw om aandacht.

[Lex]

Noord-Korea dreigt met kernoorlog

SEOUL - Noord-Korea heeft zaterdag gedreigd met een ,,krachtige nucleaire afschrikking" in reactie op de gezamenlijke legeroefening van de Verenigde Staten en Zuid-Korea. Noord-Korea is voorbereid om ,,op elk noodzakelijk moment" een ,,heilige oorlog" te kunnen beginnen, meldden staatsmedia.

Het Amerikaanse ministerie van Buitenlandse Zaken liet in een reactie weten niet geïnteresseerd te zijn in ,,een oorlog van woorden met Noord-Korea". En: ,,Wat we nodig hebben van Noord-Korea is minder provocatieve taal en meer constructieve actie."

De VS en Zuid-Korea houden van zondag tot en met woensdag een militaire oefening in de Japanse Zee, ten oosten van het Koreaanse schiereiland. Hieraan doen ongeveer achtduizend militairen, tweehonderd vliegtuigen en twintig marineschepen mee.

De oefening moet ,,een heldere boodschap aan Noord-Korea sturen dat zijn agressieve gedrag moet stoppen", zeiden de ministers van Defensie Robert Gates (VS) en Kim Tae-young (Zuid-Korea) eerder deze week.

Volgens Noord-Korea willen de VS en Zuid-Korea het land provoceren en is de legeroefening niets anders dan een poging Noord-Korea te onderdrukken. Noord-Korea ontkende zaterdag nog maar weer eens dat het niet achter het zinken van een Zuid-Koreaans oorlogsschip zit in maart. Volgens Zuid-Koreaanse onderzoekers torpedeerde Noord-Korea het schip, waardoor 46 bemanningsleden omkwamen.

Telegraaf, za 24 jul 2010, 00:25

[Lex]

War games send message to N. Korea

OSAN AIR BASE, South Korea — An F-22 squadron just deployed to Japan for training will help demonstrate America's strength to North Korea.

The show of force through joint U.S.-South Korea war games is part of the ongoing push to get North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons program, as well as to punish the regime for sinking a South Korean naval frigate in March. Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced the exercises July 20 on a trip to Seoul.

The Air Force and its South Korean counterpart are closely intertwined. A combined air operations center sits next door to the headquarters of 7th Air Force here, where Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Remington is dual hatted as the top Air Force officer in the country and the wartime operational commander of U.S. and South Korean aviation units.

Five U.S. squadrons — four fighter and one reconnaissance — are assigned to South Korea. The fighter jets are F-16 Fighting Falcons and A-10 Thunderbolts; the spy planes are U-2 Dragon Ladies. Backing up the units are squadrons in Japan at Kadena Air Base, home to F-15C Eagles, KC-135 Stratotankers and E-3 AWACS, and Misawa Air Base's F-16s. Often, one U.S.-based fighter squadron is deployed to the region.

The South Korean air force has about 24 fighter squadrons that fly F-15Ks, a Korean version of the F-15E Strike Eagle, and KF-16s.

As part of war games, four of the F-22s will fly sorties along with other Air Force jets based in South Korea and Japan, Navy jets from the carrier George Washington and South Korean fighters.

"They are all here as part of a security package to demonstrate to our allies in northeast Asia that we are here, that we are committed to the alliance with [South] Korea," Remington told Air Force Times in a July 21 interview here.

Cooperation between the air forces ranges from small-scale "buddy wing" visits by pilots and maintainers to South Korea's participation in Red Flag exercises.
"The most fun is what we do with our buddy wings," said Col. Mark DeLong, an F-16 pilot and vice commander of Osan's 51st Fighter Wing. On a buddy wing visit, a pair of Air Force fighters spend several days as part of a Korean squadron, with the two Air Force jets often flying as a two-ship formation with a larger package of South Korean jets. Later, the South Koreans send a pair of their jets to fly with the Air Force.

The large-scale missions involve dozens of U.S. and South Korean planes and hundreds of airmen.

"We have a 7th Air Force training plan that ties all of the U.S. and [South] Korean flying squadrons together under training events," said Capt. Sean "Stogi" Penrod, a weapons officer for the 51st Fighter Wing, the host unit here.

Military Times,
Posted : Friday Jul 23, 2010 13:32:18 EDT

[Lex]

Het topic is opgeschoond. Dubbele en niet relevante berichten zijn verwijderd.

Lex
Algeheel beheerder

[VandeWiel]

North Korea threatens "physical response" to U.S. moves

(Reuters) - Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urged Asia on Friday to enforce tough sanctions against North Korea, which hit back by threatening a "physical response" to Washington's plans for joint military drills with South Korea.

Clinton, speaking in Hanoi at the Asia-Pacific's biggest security dialogue, also called on Myanmar's neighbors to pressure the country's military rulers for democratic reforms, and said Asia must join the global community in sending a "clear signal" to Iran to curb its nuclear ambitions.

"One measure of the strength of a community of nations is how it responds to threats to its members, neighbors and region," Clinton told the 27-member ASEAN Regional Forum, which includes regional powers China, Japan and Russia along with the United States, European Union and Canada.

Clinton unveiled new U.S. sanctions this week against North Korea, blamed by both Washington and Seoul for the March sinking of a South Korean warship that killed 46 sailors and sharpened tensions over Pyongyang's nuclear programme.

A North Korean diplomat said Washington's new sanctions and the U.S.-South Korean drills would be met with a "physical response," and that charges it torpedoed the South's warship had pushed the divided Korean peninsula "to the brink of explosion."

"There will be a physical response to the steps imposed by the United States militarily," Ri Tong-il, a member of Pyongyang's delegation in Hanoi, told reporters. The military exercises, he added, would violate North Korean sovereignty.

The new sanctions target the ruling elite in the impoverished and isolated communist state and build on earlier U.N. sanctions that curbed trade with the North in hopes of persuading it to abandon its atomic ambitions.

Clinton said it was essential Asian nations enforce the punitive measures to encourage North Korea "to take the steps it must" to stop nuclear development and seek real peace.

She later told reporters Washington hoped for the day when Pyongyang was "less concerned about making threats and more concerned about making opportunities."

JAPAN TO MONITOR MILITARY EXERCISES

Japan waded into the crisis, announcing plans to send four Maritime Self Defense Forces officers to the U.S.-South Korea exercises off the west coast of the divided Korean peninsula as observers, responding to invitations from the two countries.

This will be the first time Japan's self defense forces join a joint exercise by the United States and South Korea starting this weekend, a Defense Ministry spokeswoman said. The four officers will be aboard U.S. aircraft carrier George Washington.

Clinton had hoped to rally regional support behind Seoul, but fell short of building consensus for a direct rebuke of Pyongyang. A senior U.S. administration official said the vast majority of countries at the Hanoi talks expressed regret over the sunken ship, but less than half were willing to condemn Pyongyang and potentially anger its powerful ally China.

In Hanoi, North Korea's foreign minister repeatedly denied any involvement in the sinking, according to diplomats present at the closed-door talks.

Clinton told reporters North Korea's belligerence prevented Washington from returning to six-party talks aimed at ending the North's nuclear weapons programme in return for generous aid.

The naval exercises are the first overt military response to the attack on the warship. The United States has said they are a show of force meant to convince the North to curb its "aggressive behavior" and will take place in international waters.

China has condemned the drills and launched its own exercises off its eastern coast.

PRESSURE ON MYANMAR

Clinton also urged Asia-Pacific ministers to put more pressure on Myanmar -- a member of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) which anchors the forum -- to enact real democratic reforms and allow elections later this year which will be both free and credible.

President Barack Obama's administration has expressed frustration that, despite U.S. offers of greater engagement, Myanmar's military rulers have refused to budge on key demands. These include the release of an estimated 2,000 political prisoners, such as Nobel Peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi.

It has also said it is concerned by reports that Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, is seeking North Korean help to develop its own nuclear programme, which, if true, could open an alarming new front in the battle against global proliferation.

Clinton's visit to Hanoi is part of the Obama administration's broader effort to boost U.S. engagement with Asia, in part to counter the rising influence of China.

Clinton also urged regional leaders to resolve longstanding territorial disputes over the South China Sea, which pit China against Vietnam and other regional countries in squabbles over the vast, potentially-oil rich maritime region.

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE66M10I20100723