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North Korea Issues Heated Warning to South
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As a member of the security initiative, South Korea is likely to receive intelligence information from the United States, Japan and other countries about ships leaving North Korean ports that may be carrying such goods, a government official said in Tokyo.
Joining the international interdiction effort "is a natural obligation for a mature country," said South Korea's foreign minister, Yu Myung-hwan. Even before Monday's nuclear test, peaceful coexistence on the Korean Peninsula had been sorely tested this spring. The North launched a long-range missile, detained a South Korean citizen, kicked out U.N. nuclear inspectors, restarted a plutonium factory and halted the six-nation negotiations on its nuclear program.
"Inter-Korean relations have hit rock bottom," said Yun Duk-min, professor of international politics at the Institute of Foreign Affairs and National Security, a government think tank in Seoul. "So it is the right thing to join PSI, even if North Korea reacts with resistance."
"The current U.S. leadership . . . has drawn the puppets [South Korea] into the PSI," North Korea's military complained Wednesday in a statement.
North Korea is thought to possess more than 200 mid-range Nodong missiles that can strike nearly any part of Japan. The Japanese government, which has invested billions of dollars in a U.S.-made antimissile defense system, is concerned that the North is making progress in designing nuclear warheads that could fit atop its missiles.
"We must look at active missile defense such as attacking an enemy's territory and bases," the former defense minister, Gen Nakatani, said at a meeting of Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party.
In China, where condemnation of the North's nuclear test was surprisingly swift and unambiguous, the state media on Tuesday printed strong reprimands of North Korea from other countries. The shower of criticism was far different from the reaction to North Korea's first nuclear test in 2006, when the Chinese media blamed the United States for provoking Pyongyang by cutting off aid.
"This may well be a reflection of Beijing's frustrations for not being able to assert control and influence over North Korea," said Wenran Jiang, research chair of the China Institute at the University of Alberta.
Staff writers Glenn Kessler in Washington, Colum Lynch at the United Nations and Ariana Eunjung Cha in Beijing and special correspondents Stella Kim in Seoul and Akiko Yamamoto in Tokyo contributed to this report.
