2:51pm UK, Tuesday May 25, 2010
Adam Arnold, Sky News Online
North Korea’s armed forces have reportedly been ordered to prepare for combat as tensions mount with the South over the deadly sinking of a warship.
The North’s leader Kim Jong-Il is thought to have told his military to be braced for war, as Seoul blares out its own propaganda into the neighbouring rival country.
As part of psychological warfare operations, South Korea is placing loudspeakers at the border and is also using radio to broadcast messages into the North.
South Korea is slashing trade and denying permission for the North’s cargo ships to pass through the South’s waters.
The tensions also spooked global markets, with the FTSE 100 index of leading British companies falling by more than 2%.
Seoul has blamed Pyongyang for a torpedo strike that sank the warship Cheonan and killed 46 sailors on March 26.
A team of international investigators concluded last week that a torpedo from a North Korean submarine tore the Cheonan apart.
The sinking was the South’s worst military disaster since the 1950-53 Korean War, which ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty.
The North denies any involvement and has warned retaliation would mean war. It has threatened to destroy any propaganda facilities installed at the heavily militarised border.
The claim that Kim had told his million-strong armed forces to prepare for combat was made by the South’s state-run Yonhap news agency, citing North Korean observers.
“We do not hope for war but, if South Korea, with the US and Japan on its back, tries to attack us, Kim Jong-Il has ordered us to finish the task of unification left undone during the… (Korean) war,” Yonhap quoted a May 20 broadcast as saying.
Pyongyang is already subject to a number of UN-backed sanctions in response to its nuclear weapons and missile programmes.
The US, which has 28,500 troops in South Korea, has thrown its full support behind its ally’s moves.
Washington is planning two major military exercises off the Korean peninsula in a display of force intended “to deter future aggression” by the North.
Also, US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is stepping up pressure on China to back international action against North Korea over the sinking of the warship.
She said peace and security on the Korean peninsula is a shared responsibility between Washington and Beijing.
Mrs Clinton said the Obama administration expects to work closely with China to “fashion an effective response” to the sinking.
China, the communist country’s main ally, has remained neutral, but the US wants Beijing to support UN Security Council action against North Korea.
Sky News Online
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