North Korea Attacks South Korea at Yeonpyeong Island (Part 1)

From the Wall Street Journal:

North Korea fired artillery rockets at South Korea's Yeonpyeong island near a disputed maritime border Tuesday, setting houses on fire in its small villages, and prompting the south to return fire and dispatch fighter jets to the area.

One South Korean Marine was killed in the skirmish and at least a dozen more were injured, military officials said.

Photos sent to South Korean TV stations by residents of nearby So-yeonpyeong island showed multiple plumes of smoke rising over its larger neighbor.

A spokesman for South Korea's Joint Chief of Staff said "scores of rounds" were fired by the North.

"The whole neighborhood is on fire," said Na Young-ok, a 46-year-old woman who has lived on the island for 20 years. She was at a bomb shelter when reached by The Wall Street Journal. "I think countless houses are on fire, but no fire truck is coming. We have a fire station but the shots are intermittently coming."

Ms. Na said a military base on the island was on fire. She said she was with about 50 people in the shelter and her child was in a similar shelter at the school on the island. She didn't know whether people were injured.

South Korean President Lee Myung-bak convened an emergency meeting of defense and security-related agencies. He ordered senior officials to "carefully manage the situation to prevent the escalation of the clash," a spokeswoman said.

The artillery—more than 50 rounds, according to island residents speaking on YTN—was fired from positions south of the North Korean city of Haeju.

The attack started at 2:34 p.m. local time, according to residents who were speaking on the TV network. There were no immediate reports of injuries.

About 1,200 people live on the island, which is 10 kilometers south of the tip of North Korea's south coast.

The attack is the second by North Korea this year against South Korea in the maritime border area of the Yellow Sea. In March, a North Korean submarine torpedoed and sank a South Korean warship near an island about 40 miles west of the island that was hit Tuesday.

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From Stratfor:

North Korea and South Korea have reportedly traded artillery fire Nov. 23 across the disputed Northern Limit Line (NLL) in the Yellow Sea to the west of the peninsula. Though details are still sketchy, South Korean news reports indicate that around 2:30 p.m. local time, North Korean artillery shells began landing in the waters around Yeonpyeongdo, one of the South Korean-controlled islands just south of the NLL. North Korea has reportedly fired as many as 200 rounds, some of which struck the island, injuring at least 10 South Korean soldiers, damaging buildings and setting fire to a mountainside. South Korea responded by firing some 80 shells of its own toward North Korea, dispatching F-16 fighter jets to the area and raising the military alert to its highest level.

South Korean President Lee Myung Bak has convened an emergency Cabinet meeting, and Seoul is determining whether to evacuate South Koreans working at inter-Korean facilities in North Korea. The barrage from North Korea was continuing at 4 p.m. Military activity appears to be ongoing at this point, and the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff are meeting on the issue. No doubt North Korea’s leadership is also convening.

The North Korean attack comes as South Korea’s annual Hoguk military exercises are under way. The exercises — set to last nine days and including as many as 70,000 personnel from all branches of the South Korean military — span from sites in the Yellow Sea including Yeonpyeongdo to Seoul and other areas on the peninsula itself. The drills have focused in particular on cross-service coordination and cooperation in recent years.

Low-level border skirmishes across the demilitarized zone and particularly the NLL are not uncommon even at the scale of artillery fire. In March, the South Korean naval corvette ChonAn was sunk in the area by what is broadly suspected to have been a North Korean torpedo, taking tensions to a peak in recent years. Nov. 22 also saw South Korean rhetoric about accepting the return of U.S. tactical nuclear weapons to the peninsula, though the United States said it has no plans at present to support such a redeployment.

While the South Korean reprisals — both artillery fire in response by self-propelled K-9 artillery and the scrambling of aircraft — thus far appear perfectly consistent with South Korean standard operating procedures, the sustained shelling of a populated island by North Korea would mark a deliberate and noteworthy escalation.

The incident comes amid renewed talk of North Korea’s nuclear program, including revelations of an active uranium-enrichment program, and amid rumors of North Korean preparations for another nuclear test. But North Korea also on Nov. 22 sent a list of delegates to Seoul for Red Cross talks with South Korea, a move reciprocated by the South, ahead of planned talks in South Korea set for Thursday. The timing of the North’s firing at Yeonpyeongdo, then, seems to contradict the other actions currently under way in inter-Korean relations. With the ongoing leadership transition in North Korea, there have been rumors of discontent within the military, and the current actions may reflect miscommunications or worse within the North’s command-and-control structure, or disagreements within the North Korean leadership.

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