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North Korea faces U.N. sanctions

Thu May 28, 2009 6:43am EDT
By Jon Herskovitz

SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea looks certain to face U.N. sanctions for this week's nuclear test, and South Korea on Thursday raised the military alert level for the peninsula after the reclusive communist state warned it was ready to attack.

North Korea this week unnerved the world with a series of provocations unseen since the 1950-53 Korean War, including war threats, missile launches and a nuclear test that puts it closer to having an atomic bomb.

The joint command for the 28,000 U.S. troops that support South Korea's 670,000 soldiers has raised its alert a notch to signify a serious threat from the belligerent North, the South's Joint Chiefs of Staff said.

It is the highest threat level since the North's only other nuclear test in October 2006.

North Korea could be set for further provocations that include additional short-range missile tests off its west coast, the South's Yonhap news agency on Wednesday night quoted an unnamed government source as saying.

Analysts said the North's saber rattling might be partly aimed at firming leader Kim Jong-il's grip on power and helping him draw up succession plans in Asia's only communist dynasty after a suspected stroke in August raised questions over his rule.

Weapons experts point out that while North Korea is pushing hard to develop a nuclear arsenal it has does not have an effective way to attack with an atomic warhead or bomb.

Security Council powers have agreed in principle that North Korea must face sanctions for defying a U.N. resolution put in place after its previous nuclear test by exploding a second device, Western diplomats said on Wednesday.

One diplomat said possible steps include a ban on importing and exporting all arms and not just heavy weapons, asset freezes and travel bans for North Korean officials and placing more firms on a U.N. blacklist. The diplomats said cargo inspections were also possible, although China is reluctant.

The measures would expand on sanctions approved by the council after Pyongyang's 2006 nuclear test, penalties that have been widely ignored and left unenforced.

North Korea, which has only become poorer since Kim took over in 1994, has been punished for years by sanctions and is so destitute it relies on aid to feed its 23 million people, but that has not deterred it from provocations.

MILITARY ON ALERT

The South's largest newspaper Chosun Ilbo quoted defense sources as saying the South has been preparing for contingencies such as artillery or missile strikes near a contested sea border off the west coast of the peninsula.

A spokesman for the North's military on Wednesday said the country could not guarantee the safety of the South's vessels in those Yellow Sea waters that have been the site of deadly naval skirmishes between the states in 1999 and 2002.

The spokesman also said South Korea's decision to join a U.S.-led anti-proliferation initiative this week was a declaration of war making the armistice that ended the 1950-53 Korean War invalid. Its military would also attack if the South inspects its ships.

Seoul's financial markets, which had fallen in the wake of the nuclear test, rose early on Thursday although traders said investors were still nervous about what more steps the North might take to raise tension in the economically powerful region.

North Korea kept up its steady string of strident rhetoric, saying in its official media that "a minor accidental clash could lead to nuclear war."

"As circumstances show, provocations of war on the part of the U.S. and South Korea have well gone beyond the risky level. It's a matter of time when a fuse for war is triggered," the North KCNA news agency reported a commentary in a state newspaper as saying.

(Additional reporting by Kim Junghyun and Rhee So-eui, editing by Jonathan Thatcher and Dean Yates)