Wrong country blamed for
artillery exchange on Korean peninsula
December 2010 From
Ottawa (Canada)
Ten days after the start of hostilities
and despite evidence to the contrary, Western
mainstream media continue to portray North Korea
as the villain. Foreign policy analyst Stephen
Gowans views the ongoing incidents as the last in
a series of provocations against North Korea.
Keeping Pyongyang under constant military
pressure has been part of a long-standing goal of
the U.S. - in tandem with its South Korean ally -
to bring North Korea to the brink of collapse by
pushing Pyongyang into accrued defense spending
to the detriment of its economic development.By
Stephen Gowans
While North Korea has been blamed for last
Tuesdays exchange of artillery fire on the
Korean peninsula, a close reading of news
reports shows that it was South Korea that
created a tinderbox and then provided the spark.
The incident happened along the Northern Limit
Line, a Western sea border unilaterally drawn by
the United States at the end of the Korean War
and never accepted by the North. The Northern
Limit Line has been the site of a number of
skirmishes between ROK and DPRK naval forces.
A year ago, the countries warships
clashed in the disputed area, with a North Korean
warship going down in flames. In 1999, a
North Korean ship went down with thirty sailors
lost and maybe seventy wounded in the same
area. [1] The contested border is not
part of the Armistice Agreement that brought
active hostilities to an end.
- South Korean and
US troops are preparing for alleged North
Korean attack.
The backdrop for the latest incident was the
Souths mobilizing 70,000 troops, 50
warships, 90 helicopters, 500 warplanes and 600
tanks in war-games exercises the North had
vigorously objected to. Pyongyang described the
exerciseswhich also involved the US Marines
and the US Air Forceas simulating an
invasion of the North, a means to
provoke a war and a rehearsal for an
invasion. Western press reports and US
government officials dismissed Pyongyangs
anxiety over the war-games as overblown, pointing
out that the exercise had been announced in
advance. But advance notice hardly lessens the
potential threat of massing troops, or makes the
North Korean militarys task of
distinguishing between war-games and preparation
for an invasion any easier.
With the North Koreans already on edge, South
Korea acted to heighten the tension.
According to an Associated Press report
:
The skirmish began Tuesday when North
Korea warned the South to halt military drills
near their sea border
When Seoul refused and
began firing artillery into disputed waters
the
North retaliated by shelling the small island of
Yeonpyeong
[2]
The South Korean newspaper, The Hankyoreh,
carried a similar report.
Prior to the incident the South
Korean military carried out a firing exercise
in
the (disputed) area around Yeonpyeong Island and
Baengnyeong Island
North Korea sent a
message Tuesday morning that it would not
tolerate firing in its territorial waters. [3]
The New York Times noted that South
Korean artillery units had been firing
from a battery on the South Korean island of
Baeknyeongdo, close to the North Korean coast
and that the South acknowledged firing
test shots in the (disputed) area. [4]
These press reports show that South Korea
acted to inflame an already volatile situation.
While most media reports obscured the point,
South Korea fired the first shots.
The South regularly mounts war-games drills
directed at North Korea, keeping the North on a
continual war footing and
in a constant state of high alert. North Koreas
response to the provocation is being used to
justify a build-up of US forces in the region,
and more joint ROK-US exercises.
President Obama and South Koreas
president agreed
to hold joint military
exercises as a first response, reported the
New York Times. The exercise will
include sending the aircraft carrier George
Washington and a number of accompanying ships
into the region
[5]
Earlier this year, the United States and South
Korea used the sinking of the Cheonan, a South
Korean warship, as an excuse to ratchet up
military pressure on North Korea. The warship
appears to have run aground in the same area in
which the latest incident occurred. Seoul and
Washington blamed North Korea for the sinking,
but the evidence South Korea brought forward in a
report authored by itself and its allies is
disputed within South Korea and has been
questioned by an official Russian investigation.
North Korea vehemently denies it sunk the warship.
The latest South Korean provocation may be
part of a larger US-ROK campaign to escalate
military pressure on North Korea, with the aim of
forcing Pyongyang to divert more of its limited
resources to defense, thereby crippling North
Koreas prospects for development and
possibly ushering in the collapse of the country.
Washington has long followed a practice of
isolating, blockading and using military threats
to intimidate countries that have broken free of
imperialist domination.
This isnt an isolated incident, in which
an unpredictable and bellicose North Korea
behaves badly to extract concessions from the
Westas the predictably anti-North Korea
Western media put itbut part of a larger
pattern of the West seeking the DPRKs
destruction through a program of escalating
diplomatic isolation, economic warfare and
military provocations.Voltaire, international edition
Stephen Gowans RT
TV Interview on Rising Tensions in Korea - 1
December 2010