South Korean marines on Sunday patrolled on Yeonpyeong Island, the site of a North Korean shelling attack last month.
PYONGYANG, North Korea — South Korea began live-fire artillery exercises in an area disputed by the North on Monday, escalating their confrontation even as an American official reported “important progress” in breaking through the North’s isolation in talks here in the North Korean capital.
South Korea conducted a military exercise on Yeonpyeong Island, near the disputed North-South maritime border.
People at a railroad station in Seoul on Monday watched a television news report about the South Korean military’s planned artillery drill on Yeonpyeong Island.
The South had insisted on its right to go through with the drills in the area of Yeonpyeong Island, despite threats from the North for massive military retaliation.
But a few hours earlier, Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico, a former United States ambassador to the United Nations, said the North had agreed to concessions related to its nuclear program, a main source of tension on the peninsula. Mr. Richardson was on an unofficial trip approved by the State Department, meeting here with high ranking military officials, the North Korean vice president and members of the Foreign Ministry over five days.
Mr. Richardson said the North had made two significant concessions toward reopening six-party talks on the country’s nuclear program. He said it had agreed to allow United Nations nuclear inspectors back into the Yongbyon nuclear complex to insure that it is not producing enriched uranium for a nuclear bomb. The North recently showed a Western nuclear expert a new and stunningly sophisticated facility there; it had expelled inspectors last year.
The other concession was a willingness to sell 12,000 plutonium fuel rods to South Korea, removing bomb-making material from the North.
“I would describe this as important progress,” Mr. Richardson said.
However a spokesman for the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff said the concessions had no bearing on the South’s drills.
Last month, drills on Yeonpyeong Island set off an hourlong bombardment by the North, the first military attack against a civilian community since the 1950-53 Korean War. Two civilians were killed, along with two servicemen. The deaths spurred a rare surge of popular demands for revenge in the South.
This has put the South’s president, Lee Myung-bak, in a political bind, between public pressure to respond and the risk of escalation. A conservative who took office with pledges to be tougher on the North, Mr. Lee has been criticized for not responding militarily to the sinking of one of the South’s warships in the spring, and for the South’s relatively mild military response to the shelling.
For its part, the North denies responsibility for the sinking, and maintains that the shelling of Yeonpyeong was in self-defense. It has promised to respond fiercely if the South fires into waters it claims, including those around Yeonpyeong, eight miles off its coast.
Political analysts believe it has two objectives in pressing its territorial claims: to pressure the South to resume food aid and other assistance to the North’s collapsed economy, and to burnish the military credentials of Kim Jong-un, the youngest son and now heir-apparent of the dictator Kim Jung-il.
North Korea often issues bellicose warnings. But Tony Namkung, a senior adviser to Mr. Richardson, said he did not think the North was posturing.
“In 20 years of following the North, I’ve never seen such unequivocal statements,” Mr. Namkung said Monday. “There is no doubt in my mind that there will be a response. The only issue is whether they will once again target civilians, or deliberately try to avoid hitting civilian targets.”
On Sunday, the United Nations Security Council ended an all-day emergency session with no statement on the situation, unable to call on the South to halt its exercises because the members could not agree on how to refer to the North’s shelling the South Korean island. China opposed the majority of the other Security Council members over whether there would be a specific condemnation of the North.
During more than six hours of talks behind closed doors, Sin Son-ho, the North Korean ambassador, warned that if war broke out it would not be limited to the peninsula and could easily spread worldwide, diplomats said. He stressed that live fire exercises near the disputed North-South maritime border were a violation of North Korean territory and called it “gangsterlike” behavior, according to diplomats in the meeting.
In-kook Park, the South Korean ambassador, noted that the border had been established in 1953 and that North Korea had accepted it under a 1992 agreement, diplomats said. Mr. Park also pointed out that South Korea had repeatedly conducted similar exercises over decades and, as this time, had always given notice, diplomats said.
Russia, which called the special session, released a text noting “dangerous aggravation” on the Korean Peninsula. China endorsed that position, diplomats said, but South Korea ’s allies, including the United States and Japan, considered it a veiled criticism of Seoul ’s continued military maneuvers.
“They are implying the South Koreans are doing something which they should not, while we view the drills as perfectly within their rights and something they have done countless times,” said one Western diplomat, speaking on ground rules of anonymity.
By: Sharon Lafraniere (ny times)
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