Is this the beginning of new Korean War ?
Bombardment increases Korea tension
Smoke rises from South Korea’s Yeonpyeong Island after the assault by North Korea
Pyongyang bombarded a South Korean island, killing two servicemen and seriously injuring more than a dozen people, including civilians.
the North’s bloodiest assault on civilian targets since it planted a bomb on a South Korean airliner in 1987, killing 115 people
200-shell attack on Yeonpyeong island in the Yellow Sea on Tuesday as unforgivable.
It comes days after North Korea revealed the existence of a modern and extensive uranium enrichment plant, which can produce both nuclear fuel and fissile material for a bomb.
Sergei Lavrov, Russian foreign minister, called for an immediate end to all strikes, saying that there was a “colossal danger” of an escalation in fighting.
US stood “shoulder to shoulder” with Seoul. “We are in close and continuing contact with our Korean allies,” it added.
South Korea returned artillery fire, scrambled F-16 fighter jets and lifted the state of military readiness to its highest level short of war.
The office of Ban Ki-moon, UN secretary-general and a former South Korean foreign minister, described the assault “one of the gravest incidents since the end of the Korean War”.
“We consider that that was a violation of UN Security Council resolution[s],” he said.
South Korean state television showed photographs of several plumes of thick black smoke billowing from houses on the island of Yeonpyeong, just off North Korea’s west coast.
North Korea had no immediate comment on its motives. The Yellow Sea lies on a disputed maritime border where Pyongyang often expresses anger at South Korean naval exercises.
North Korea is flexing its muscles to smooth the succession of Kim Jong-eun, the third son of Kim Jong-il, the country’s ailing dictator.
North Korea launched the attack because Kim Jong-il had died.
North Korea said it would “launch merciless military retaliatory strikes” if South Korea crossed the disputed maritime border “even 0.001 millimetre”.
News of the attack came after South Korea’s foreign exchange market and stock market had closed. However, the one-month dollar/won non-deliverable forward fell as much as 3.5 per cent after the artillery strike. Before the shelling, the won closed down 1 per cent to 1,137.5 per dollar. The Kospi stock index ended 0.79 per cent lower.
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