South Korea's ruling party said yesterday it feared Washington might be getting emotional in its handling of North Korea's nuclear crisis, a day after US President George W. Bush said he was considering "all options" on Korea.
Bush said on Friday that "all options are on the table," suggesting that the US could consider military action in its efforts to curb the Stalinist regime's nuclear activities.
Yesterday, North Korea continued its talk of war, accusing Bush of planning to invade the impoverished state and warning that a conflict on the divided Korean Peninsula would devastate the South as well.
"North Korea's recent moves cannot be praised, but we cannot help expressing concern as to whether emotions have interfered with US efforts to resolve the North's nuclear problem," Chang Chun-hyong, a deputy spokesman of the South's ruling Millennium Democratic Party, said in a statement yesterday.
Chang was referring to Bush's remarks and those of the US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who called North Korea "a terrorist regime" on Wednesday.
"We make it clear that there should be no mistake in judgment and a worst-case scenario should never unfold on the Korean Peninsula," it said.
South Korea, while saying it wants to continue its close military alliance with Washington, fears that the standoff between the US and North Korea might lead to clashes and has urged the US to seek a peaceful settlement.
"The situation on the Korean Peninsula is inching closer to the phase of serious crisis," the North's state-run daily Rodong Sinmun said. "There is no guarantee that the US warhawks, seized by extreme war fever, would not ignite a war of aggression."
"This war will not bring disasters to the North only," Rodong Sinmun said. "It is, therefore, a task facing all Koreans in the North and the South to avert the danger of a war and protect peace on the Korean Peninsula."
North Korea's long-standing strategy has been to drive a wedge between Seoul and Washington by arguing that the US stance poses a threat to South Korea as well. It warned Thursday that if the US builds up reinforcements in the region, it could trigger "a total war."
Bush and his aides usually take care to state that the US has no intention of attacking North Korea. In his comments Friday, Bush did not repeat that message.
Relations between the US and North Korea deteriorated in October, when US officials said North Korea had admitted having a nuclear program in violation of a 1994 agreement. Washington and its allies suspended oil shipments to North Korea -- which in turn expelled UN nuclear inspectors and pulled out of a global nuclear arms control treaty.
The UN International Atomic Energy Agency's 35-nation board of governors will meet next Wednesday to discuss the standoff and is almost certain to send the dispute to the UN Security Council, which may discuss economic sanctions against Pyongyang.
US officials have spoken before about their ability to respond militarily to any potential hostile action by North Korea, in part to dispel any hopes Pyongyang may have about taking advantage of Bush's focus on Iraq.
AGING: As of last month, people aged 65 or older accounted for 20.06 percent of the total population and the number of couples who got married fell by 18,685 from 2024 Taiwan has surpassed South Korea as the country least willing to have children, with an annual crude birthrate of 4.62 per 1,000 people, Ministry of the Interior data showed yesterday. The nation was previously ranked the second-lowest country in terms of total fertility rate, or the average number of children a woman has in her lifetime. However, South Korea’s fertility rate began to recover from 2023, with total fertility rate rising from 0.72 and estimated to reach 0.82 to 0.85 by last year, and the crude birthrate projected at 6.7 per 1,000 people. Japan’s crude birthrate was projected to fall below six,
Conflict with Taiwan could leave China with “massive economic disruption, catastrophic military losses, significant social unrest, and devastating sanctions,” a US think tank said in a report released on Monday. The German Marshall Fund released a report titled If China Attacks Taiwan: The Consequences for China of “Minor Conflict” and “Major War” Scenarios. The report details the “massive” economic, military, social and international costs to China in the event of a minor conflict or major war with Taiwan, estimating that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) could sustain losses of more than half of its active-duty ground forces, including 100,000 troops. Understanding Chinese
US President Donald Trump in an interview with the New York Times published on Thursday said that “it’s up to” Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) what China does on Taiwan, but that he would be “very unhappy” with a change in the “status quo.” “He [Xi] considers it to be a part of China, and that’s up to him what he’s going to be doing, but I’ve expressed to him that I would be very unhappy if he did that, and I don’t think he’ll do that. I hope he doesn’t do that,” Trump said. Trump made the comments in the context
SELF-DEFENSE: Tokyo has accelerated its spending goal and its defense minister said the nation needs to discuss whether it should develop nuclear-powered submarines China is ramping up objections to what it sees as Japan’s desire to acquire nuclear weapons, despite Tokyo’s longstanding renunciation of such arms, deepening another fissure in the two neighbors’ increasingly tense ties. In what appears to be a concerted effort, China’s foreign and defense ministries issued statements on Thursday condemning alleged remilitarism efforts by Tokyo. The remarks came as two of the country’s top think tanks jointly issued a 29-page report framing actions by “right-wing forces” in Japan as posing a “serious threat” to world peace. While that report did not define “right-wing forces,” the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs was
RSS