Wednesday, November 24th, 2010 VOA News The United States is sending an aircraft carrier to waters off South Korea for a joint naval exercise that Washington describes as a response to a deadly North Korean artillery strike on a South Korean island.
The U.S. military force in South Korea says the USS George Washington carrier group will participate in the drill Sunday to next Wednesday in seas west of the Korean peninsula.
It says the drill is defensive and was planned long before North Korea attacked Yeonpyeong island Tuesday with more than 100 artillery shells, killing two South Korean marines and two civilians and wounding 18 other people. The island is located near the two Koreas’ disputed western maritime border.
The U.S. military says the exercise will demonstrate the strength of the U.S.-South Korea alliance and the U.S. commitment to regional stability through deterrence.
South Korea responded to the Yeonpyeong attack
U.S. President Barack Obama condemned the North Korean shelling as outrageous. He spoke by phone Tuesday with South Korean President Lee Myung-bak and pledged to organize international condemnation of Pyongyang.
The United States and Japan also called on China to use its influence with North Korea to restrain that country’s actions. Beijing has long supported the North Korean leadership to try to prevent instability in the neighboring state from spreading into Chinese territory.
Tuesday’s exchange of artillery fire was one of the most dramatic military confrontations between the North and South since the Korean War ended in 1953.
China’s foreign ministry said Wednesday it feels pain and regret at the loss of life and property in the incident, and it urged both sides to stay “calm and promote restraint.”
North Korea said it shelled Yeonpyeong in self-defense after South Korea fired artillery from the island Tuesday as part of a military exercise. The exercise involved the firing of shells in a southerly direction, away from North Korean territory.
Pyongyang claims sovereignty over all the waters around Yeonpyeong and says it warned Seoul not to conduct the exercise. Both Koreas have threatened strong retaliation for further provocation by the other side.
Seoul said Wednesday it also is stopping recently resumed aid shipments to the North in response to the shelling of Yeonpyeong. But the South Korean government faced criticism in parliament for not retaliating more aggressively for the attack.
It was the first time South Korean civilians have been killed in a North Korean military assault since Pyongyang shot down a South Korean airliner in 1987.
Russian state media say the deputy secretary of Russia’s Security Council, Vladimir Nazarov, blamed the outbreak of fighting on what he called “the intensification of military activities by South Korea and its allies.”
Some information in this story was provided by AP, AFP and Reuters.
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