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North Korea has unleashed a series of angry reactions, from missile launches to threats of suspending cross-border dialogue and reducing the South to "ashes." These have come just ahead of the South's parliamentary elections and the first visit by Seoul's new conservative leader to Washington for a Camp David summit.
Both events are considered crucial to the fate of President Lee Myung-bak, who plans to implement sweeping political reforms and business-powered economic growth with strong public backing and support from the country's main security ally, the United States.
But Lee's "future-oriented" vision may be overshadowed by heightening tensions on the peninsula, which remains technically in a state of war as the 1950-53 Korean War ended without a peace treaty.
North Korea, which has previously used missile tests to ratchet up military tensions, shot off a battery of ship-to-ship missiles in waters off the peninsula's west coast on Friday, one day after it expelled South Korean officials from the joint industrial park that has been the key symbol of fledgling inter-Korean cooperation.
South Korean officials have said they believe the North's missile launches were part of routine military exercises, but expressed concern that they could lead to a naval clash. The two Koreas have long been involved in a territorial dispute over their poorly-marked western sea border. The North has refused to recognize the current borderline imposed by the United Nations at the end of the Korean War, insisting on its own maritime border farther south, to include lucrative blue crab beds.
Tensions often rise in the border waters during the May-June and October-November crab seasons, when North Korean fishing boats move south in search of crab beds, backed by patrol boats. The territorial sovereignty contest triggered an armed clash in 1999 and again in 2002 when the two Koreas traded naval gunfire which left dozens of casualties on both sides.
Fueling the concerns, the North's navy warned against South Korean warships intruding into its territorial waters, saying this could cause another naval skirmish.
"The South Korean warmongers' reckless provocations are creating a situation throughout the western maritime border in which armed clashes can erupt any time," the North's navy command said in a statement.
Pyongyang further stepped up tensions over the weekend when it threatened to turn the South into "ashes" if Seoul made the "slightest move" to attack the North, in one of the harshest warnings in years. "Everything will be in ashes, not just a sea of fire, if our advanced preemptive strike once begins," the North said in a statement by an unidentified military commentator.
The military threat came in response to comments made last week by the new chairman of the South's Joint Chiefs of Staff that his country would strike suspected North Korean nuclear weapons sites if Pyongyang attempted to attack the South with atomic bombs.
"Our revolutionary army will counter any slightest move of the South's 'preemptive attack' on our nuclear bases with a more rapid and more powerful preemptive attack," the North's military statement said.
Pyongyang has also threatened to cut off all official dialogue channels with Seoul unless it apologizes for the officer's remark, saying it does not consider the remark as an "accidental slip of the tongue" but as representing the South's "new confrontational policy" against the North.
In another bid to escalate tensions, North Korea's jet fighters have approached close to South Korea's airspace more than 10 times since Lee took office late last month, according to local news reports. The North has also intensified its winter military drills, increasing ground and air maneuvers despite its acute fuel shortages, in an apparent bid to counter Lee's tough stance, highlighted by his pledge to adopt "a give-and-take approach" in providing aid to the famine-hit North.
Lee convened a presidential security meeting on Sunday but decided to remain low-profile, downplaying the North's repeated threats. "The government will not weigh short-term gains and losses in coping with the North Korean threats. We'll just take a long-term approach to the issues," the presidential office said in a statement.
Analysts in Seoul said North Korea is likely to further raise tensions, using brinkmanship as a tactic in an effort to boost its standing ahead of the planned Seoul-Washington summit on April 18-19, which will be largely focused on raising pressure on the North over the nuclear standoff.
"The North's moves seem aimed at keeping hawks in Seoul and Washington from having bigger voices," said Kim Yong-hyun, a professor at Dongguk University in Seoul.
