SEOUL: South Korea’s navy Thursday staged a major anti-submarine exercise, its first show of strength since tensions with North Korea flared over the sinking of one of Seoul’s warships.
About 10 ships including a 3,000-tonne destroyer and three patrol boats took part in the one-day drill, which included the dropping of depth charges and naval gunfire, Yonhap news agency quoted military officials as saying.
The defence ministry declined to give details of the exercise.
The drill was held off the west coast town of Taean, far south of the disputed Yellow Sea border where the Cheonan corvette was torn in two on March 26.
Tensions have risen sharply since a multinational investigation concluded last week that a North Korean submarine fired a heavy torpedo to sink the Cheonan with the loss of 46 crew members.
Officials quoted by Yonhap said South Korea’s military and the 28,500 US troops in the South had raised their alert level and stepped up surveillance of the North from satellites and reconnaissance aircraft.
On Monday the South announced a series of military, diplomatic and economic measures including a trade cut-off to punish its neighbour.
A decision to resume cross-border loudspeaker propaganda broadcasts halted six years ago has been denounced by the North, which threatens to cut access to a joint industrial park and open fire on loudspeakers in response.
The South has also banned the North’s merchant ships from using its sea lanes and a destroyer has been stationed in the Jeju Strait off the south coast to turn back the vessels.
South Korea and the United States have also launched a diplomatic drive for United Nations Security Council sanctions. But China, wielding veto power in the council, has held back so far from condemning its ally the North.
The North says the South faked evidence of its involvement in the sinking to fuel confrontation for domestic political reasons. It threatens “all-out war” against any punitive moves.
The regime has said it is breaking all cross-border links in protest at Seoul’s “smear campaign”.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited Seoul Wednesday in a show of support and said the world had a duty to respond to the North’s attack.
A US diplomat travelling with her told reporters Beijing would carefully move closer to Seoul’s position. A visit Friday to South Korea by Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao could mark the start of the change, the official said.
Russia, which also has a Security Council veto, said it would send experts to Seoul to study the findings of the investigation into the sinking.
President Dmitry Medvedev “considers it extremely important to establish the precise reason for the loss of the ship and to reveal accurately who is personally responsible for the events”, the Kremlin said in a statement.
Once responsibility was established, “the measures judged necessary and adequate by the international community must be taken”, it said.
The South Korean-led investigators said parts of a torpedo recovered from the Yellow Sea match the specifications of one offered by the North for export.
Pyongyang’s official news agency late Wednesday repeated denials of involvement and said it would have had nothing to gain from the sinking.
It accused the South’s conservative government of fabricated evidence to stoke Cold War confrontation.
It said the North was focusing all its efforts to build a strong and prosperous socialist state by 2012, for which peace was a prerequisite.
“Anyone with reason will easily understand that we would have nothing to gain by creating such an incident,” the agency said in a commentary.
