South Korea’s leader yesterday ruled out going to war with North Korea, hours after his government asked the UN to punish the communist nation over the sinking of a warship.
“There is absolutely no possibility of a full-scale war on the Korean peninsula,” South Korean President Lee Myung-bak told a group of businesspeople in Singapore.
The meeting was closed to the media, and the comments were posted by Lee’s spokesman, Park Sun-kyu, on the presidential Web site.
“But occasionally, there has been locally peace-threatening behavior” from North Korea, Lee said.
“We will strongly suppress it,” he added, without elaborating.
It was the first time since the ship sinking that Lee has categorically ruled out war with North Korea. The North, however, has warned that any move to punish it over the sinking could lead to war.
Lee’s comments were aimed at assuaging prospective investors.
“Don’t worry about a war, invest,” he was quoted as telling the businesspeople.
The two Koreas technically remain in a state of war because their three-year conflict ended in a truce, not a peace treaty, in 1953.
North Korea denies it is responsible for the March sinking of the South Korean corvette Cheonan that killed 46 sailors. An international probe concluded that a North Korean submarine torpedoed it.
On Friday, South Korea officially referred North Korea to the UN Security Council, taking its strongest step ever toward making the communist North face international punishment.
It set the stage for the possibility of the most intense confrontation between North Korea and the UN Security Council since the 1950 to 1953 Korean War, which was authorized by the council in response to an invasion of South Korea by North Korean forces.
Closed-door council consultations on the Cheonan incident were scheduled for tomorrow morning, the UN spokesman’s office said.
Lee, who is in Singapore to attend a security summit organized by the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, on Friday urged North Korea to “admit its wrongdoing” and pledge to “never engage in such a reprehensible action.”
“If the enemy ... must understand that there is a limit,” Lee said. They “must understand very clearly that they will have to suffer the consequences.”
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