South Korea warned that it would respond "very strongly" to any further provocations by North Korea.
"If there are future provocations, I don't think we can be reserved
because it would be hard to suppress them because they're getting
bolder and bolder," South Korean Minister of National Defence Kim
Kwan-Jin said on Saturday.
Speaking at a regional security conference in Singapore, Kim said "we
are trying to be proactively deterrent" in dealing with the communist
North.
"So proactive deterrence means that if there is a provocation we will
respond very strongly as an exercise of our jurisdiction rights, and we
will defuse those provocative intents," Kim said through an interpreter.
The South Korean government was lambasted for its reserved response
last year to the North's shelling of the border island of Yeongpyeong
as well as the sinking of the battleship Cheonan.
Kim's comments in Singapore come on the heels of North Korea's
disclosure Wednesday of a secret meeting with the South in Beijing last
month at which it said Seoul "begged" for three summits.
Analysts said the North's revelation slammed the door on dialogue and
embarrassed the South's conservative government as well as damaging
hopes of resuming multilateral nuclear disarmament talks any time soon.
At the security meeting in Singapore, US Secretary of Defense Robert
Gates said tensions on the Korean peninsula were in "danger of
unpredictable escalation in the event of another provocation."
Gates said public opinion in South Korea "is much less tolerant of the possibility of turning the other cheek another time." AFP
