Few days ago, i heard a shocking news that might have changed my mind towards North Korea; there was a complicated battle between North and South on the sea boarder of two Korea.
This is the actual article about that
Seoul, South Korea (CNN) -- North and South Korea said their
naval forces clashed Tuesday in disputed waters, and each blamed the
other for what is the first such violent incident in seven years.
South
Korean Rear Adm. Lee Ki Sik said the nation's forces issued three
verbal warnings to a ship from the Communist north once it had crossed
a demarcation line late Tuesday morning.
The South Koreans then
fired a warning shot, but when the North Korean vessel continued
southward, the South Koreans opened fire. Lee said the North Koreans
returned fire before heading back, their ship damaged in the exchange.
North
Korea, however, defended its actions. The patrol boat was on "routine
guard," according to a North Korean army report cited by the official
Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), and the incident occurred because of
"provocation perpetrated by the South Korean forces in the waters of
the north side."
"The South Korean
military authorities should make an apology to the North side for the
armed provocation and take a responsible measure against the recurrence
of the similar provocation," said the report.
Lee said there were no South Korean casualties, and the North Koreans report didn't mention any casualties in the clash, which occurred off the Korean peninsula's western coast.
Video: Korea gunbattle
Another South Korean official told the
nation's semi-official Yonhap News Agency that South Korea was not
ruling out "the possibility that the clash may have been accidental."
However,
South Korean President Lee Myung-bak convened an emergency security
meeting and urged the military to ensure that the naval clash did not
escalate into something greater, Yonhap reported.
U.S. reaction
was muted. In a briefing aboard Air Force One, White House Press
Secretary Robert Gibbs said, "I would say to the North Koreans that we
hope that there will be no further action in the Yellow Sea that could
be seen as an escalation."
The naval skirmish comes just days
after North Korea pressed for direct talks with the United States,
saying the two need to settle their differences before meaningful
multilateral nuclear discussions can proceed, state media reported.
The
reclusive Communist state pulled out of nuclear talks in April to
protest the United Nations' condemnation of its nuclear test and
missile launches. It has accused Washington of violating its
sovereignty by singling it out and reporting it to the United Nations
Security Council.
President Obama is scheduled to visit South
Korea next week on a trip to Asia that he begins on Thursday. North
Korea will be one of the main issues to be discussed during the tour --
which also will take the president to Japan, China, and Singapore.
North and South Korea have been bitterly divided since the 1950-53 war between them ended without a peace treaty.
There
was, however, an armistice with the U.N. Command establishing the
Northern Limit Line (NLL), a demarcation on the Yellow Sea designed to
avert clashes at sea. But the two nations dispute the exact location of
the sea border, and North Korea does not observe the line.
Clashes
have occurred before in the Yellow Sea, especially during crab fishing
season, according to the defense news Web site Globalsecurity.org.
Since 2001, North Korean vessels have crossed the NLL 65 times -- 22
were this year -- though most of these incidents do not turn violent.
The
first clash since the Korean War that turned deadly took place in June
1999 when a North Korean ship was sunk. And in 2002, a series of North
Korean incursions sparked an exchange that killed six South Korean
sailors and wounded nine others.
This incident, in fact, affected my emotion towards North Korea. Because I am a South Korean, I am pretty sure that even though I tried to be objective; therefore, I tried not to think about the incident that happened in Korea. In fact, my mentor talked to me that my essay is more likely onto South Korean's point of view. I think I should try not to put my emotion into my essay more from now on.
By the way, this week I have been working on many stuffs too. I finished writing outlines of my two senior project essay; DMZ and The history of Korean Peninsula. Furthermore, I started to correct and write more drafts about my essays. In fact, I finally figured it out what to write my in last essay; I think it is going to be about the different perspectives toward North Korea. In this essay, I will put the various of point of views over North Korea which I think is very interesting. For instance, I will ask teenagers, 30~40, over 50 and foreigners that how do they think about North Korea. Therefore, I am going to make few questions about the interview from now on.
