North Korea making threats at South Korean airliners
Posted: 06 Mar 2009, 16:31
By Jon Herskovitz and Yoo Choonsik
SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea made threats on Thursday against South Korean commercial airliners that fly near its territory during U.S.-South Korean military drills next week, ratcheting up tensions with its neighbor.
"Security cannot be guaranteed for South Korean civil airplanes flying through the territorial air of our side and its vicinity ... above the East Sea of Korea (Sea of Japan) in particular, while the military exercises are under way," the North's KCNA news agency quoted a statement from a government official as saying.
Officials from South Korea's two major airlines, Korean Air and Asiana Airlines, said they would alter certain routes to move planes further away from North Korea, South Korea's Yonhap news agency said.
South Korea and the United States have held the military drills for years without major incident. North Korea regularly criticizes the annual exercises as "a prelude to invasion and nuclear war." The drills will run from March 9-20.
In Washington, State Department spokesman Gordon Duguid called North Korea's statement "distinctly unhelpful" and said that instead of threatening civilian aviation, Pyongyang should be trying to comply with its commitments under stalled regional nuclear disarmament talks.
The two Koreas are technically still at war and station about 1 million troops near their respective sides of the Demilitarized Zone buffer that has divided the peninsula since the 1950-53 Korean War ended in a ceasefire, but not a peace treaty.
The United States, which led U.N. forces fighting for South Korea during the war, stations about 28,000 troops in the South to support Seoul's 670,000 soldiers. The impoverished North is one of the world's most militarized states, with some 1.2 million troops.
http://www.reuters.com/article/world...5242RW20090305
SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea made threats on Thursday against South Korean commercial airliners that fly near its territory during U.S.-South Korean military drills next week, ratcheting up tensions with its neighbor.
"Security cannot be guaranteed for South Korean civil airplanes flying through the territorial air of our side and its vicinity ... above the East Sea of Korea (Sea of Japan) in particular, while the military exercises are under way," the North's KCNA news agency quoted a statement from a government official as saying.
Officials from South Korea's two major airlines, Korean Air and Asiana Airlines, said they would alter certain routes to move planes further away from North Korea, South Korea's Yonhap news agency said.
South Korea and the United States have held the military drills for years without major incident. North Korea regularly criticizes the annual exercises as "a prelude to invasion and nuclear war." The drills will run from March 9-20.
In Washington, State Department spokesman Gordon Duguid called North Korea's statement "distinctly unhelpful" and said that instead of threatening civilian aviation, Pyongyang should be trying to comply with its commitments under stalled regional nuclear disarmament talks.
The two Koreas are technically still at war and station about 1 million troops near their respective sides of the Demilitarized Zone buffer that has divided the peninsula since the 1950-53 Korean War ended in a ceasefire, but not a peace treaty.
The United States, which led U.N. forces fighting for South Korea during the war, stations about 28,000 troops in the South to support Seoul's 670,000 soldiers. The impoverished North is one of the world's most militarized states, with some 1.2 million troops.
http://www.reuters.com/article/world...5242RW20090305