Korean Peninsula

Here is an excerpt of an editorial from Asahi Shimbun, Tokyo, which was published Wednesday.THERE appears to be some signs of incipient change in international relations on the Korean peninsula. North Korea, which was isolated in the international scene, has shown a flexible attitude toward the United States. Pyongyang has also started to mend its relations with China, at the highest level, which have been frozen for many years.On the whole, steps being taken on the Korean peninsula can be seen as moving toward an easing of tensions there.

North Korea's recent threats to target South Korean and American cities with atomic destruction have the shrill belligerence of a 6-year-old's temper tantrum. But while few analysts believe North Korea has the means to carry out its threats, U.S. and South Korean officials would nevertheless be unwise to ignore them. With tensions on the peninsula higher than at any time since the end of the Korean War, there's great danger a conflict could break out by accident or through miscalculation.

SEOUL, South Korea -- Despite a desire by officials here to assume greater responsibility for the defense of their country, the United States and South Korea agreed yesterday to leave a U.S. commander in charge of their combined armies in the event of a war on the Korean peninsula. With steady improvements by South Korea's military and the nation's emergence as an economic power, South Korean President Roh Moo Hyun said recently that his country was ready to take on more control of its armed forces and suggested altering the current arrangement that put South Korean forces under U.S. command during wartime.

BEIJING — He is the new public face of North Korea: Jong Tae-se is a 26-year-old publicity hound with his own blog, where he strikes a sultry, bare-chested pose. He has appeared in television commercials. He drives a silver Hummer and likes to dress like hip-hop artist Tupac Shakur. When he goes on the road, he travels with a laptop, iPod and sometimes a Nintendo DS and a Sony PlayStation Portable. Jong is the star striker of North Korea's 2010 World Cup team. That makes him at this particular moment the most recognizable living North Korean, with the possible exception of the Dear Leader, Kim Jong Il. This is the first time North Korea has qualified for the World Cup since 1966.

WASHINGTON - Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has put 24 long-range bombers on alert for possible deployment within range of North Korea, to deter "opportunism" while Washington is focused on Iraq and to give President Bush military options if diplomacy fails to halt North Korea's effort to produce nuclear weapons, officials said yesterday. The White House said yesterday that Bush was still committed to a diplomatic solution to the crisis. Any decision to bolster the considerable U.S. military presence near North Korea was making "certain our contingencies are viable," said Ari Fleischer, the president's spokesman.

Narcotics detectives raided a Glen Burnie apartment Tuesday night and charged the resident with possession of anabolic steroids, police said.Detectives obtained a search warrant for the home of Charles Speake, 24, in the 6400 block of Polk Circle, police said. The raid occurred shortly after 8 p.m.The investigation was conducted in cooperation with investigators from the federal Food and Drug Administration and was designed to stop the importation of steroids into the county, police said.

GENEVA -- A week of talks aimed at creating a framework for peace on the tense Korean peninsula ended in an impasse yesterday with the United States and North Korea blaming each other for the failure.The sticking point was the North Korean insistence that withdrawal of U.S. troops from South Korea be a key item on the agenda of the talks, which involve South Korea, North Korea, the United States and China. U.S. officials have repeatedly refused that demand, prompting North Korea's chief negotiator, Kim Gye Gwan, to say that he did not see the point of continuing discussions.

The crisis began Oct. 16 with the news that North Korea had a secret nuclear weapons program. It escalated in December when North Korea announced that it was defying the rest of the world by removing equipment that international inspectors had installed eight years earlier to prevent North Korea from using its plutonium stockpile to produce nuclear weapons. Then, North Korea announced that it was starting up a nuclear reactor and ordered inspectors to leave the country. Here is how Koreans are viewing the situation, in excerpts taken yesterday from newspapers, news agencies and government statements: Korean Central News Agency of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (a North Korean news agency)

TOKYO - North Korea expressed regret yesterday for a naval battle last month that killed five South Korean sailors and offered to renew working-level talks aimed at improving relations between the wary neighbors. Pyongyang stopped short of accepting blame for the clash, however, which occurred in seafood-rich waters along the disputed Yellow Sea boundary. The fight prompted Washington to withdraw its offer for high-level meetings with the North. "We regret the accidental armed clash which happened a short while ago, and we believe that both North and South must make joint efforts to prevent such an incident from re-occurring," North Korean Cabinet official Kim Ryong Sung told South Korean Unification Minister Jeong Se Hyun in a telephone conversation, according to officials in the South.

TOKYO -- Amid rising political tensions on the Korean peninsula, Defense Secretary William S. Cohen urged Japanese leaders yesterday to get parliament moving on guidelines enabling Japan to back up the United States in military conflicts in the region.But long-stalled action on the guidelines -- which were signed by the two countries in September 1997 but still require approval by parliament -- is elusive.Japan's "peace constitution" contains a clause renouncing war, although the country maintains the Self-Defense Forces for "exclusively defensive" purposes.

SEOUL, South Korea -- Despite a desire by officials here to assume greater responsibility for the defense of their country, the United States and South Korea agreed yesterday to leave a U.S. commander in charge of their combined armies in the event of a war on the Korean peninsula. With steady improvements by South Korea's military and the nation's emergence as an economic power, South Korean President Roh Moo Hyun said recently that his country was ready to take on more control of its armed forces and suggested altering the current arrangement that put South Korean forces under U.S. command during wartime.

COMMAND POST TANGO, South Korea - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice stepped off her airplane in Seoul yesterday evening, boarded an Army Black Hawk helicopter and immediately flew to this underground command bunker from which military commanders would direct any war against North Korea. "I wanted to come here to thank you for what you do on the front lines of freedom," she told more than 100 service members in the war room, carved deep inside a mountain south of Seoul. "I know you face a close-in threat every day."

SEOUL, South Korea - In response to heavy South Korean pressure, the United States has agreed to stretch out over the next three years the withdrawal of one-third of American troops here, dropping an earlier deadline of next year, U.S. and South Korean officials said yesterday. Washington had announced the withdrawal in June, over objections from South Korea. This summer, 3,500 American soldiers left here for Iraq, the first of a total of 5,000 American troops to be withdrawn this year from South Korea.

Redeployment will help blunt terrorist threat Some people are upset with President Bush's decision to redeploy our troops ("Bush to alter deployment of U.S. forces," Aug. 17). But as the president has said, the world has certainly changed over the past few years, and a static approach to troop deployment is insanity in such a changing world. It is quite interesting that the likes of retired Gen. Wesley K. Clark are so concerned about that this "slap in the face of the Europeans ... is more unilateralism on the part of the administration."

SEOUL, South Korea - Even as the Bush administration seeks a negotiated settlement to the North Korean nuclear standoff, an intimidating array of high-tech weaponry, much of it battle-tested in Iraq and Afghanistan, is being deployed south of the demilitarized zone that divides the Korean Peninsula. The weaponry has quietly been moved into South Korea since the summer as part of a significant restructuring of the 37,000 U.S. troops in the country. In return for moving American soldiers away from the DMZ, the Pentagon has promised Seoul, the South Korean capital, that it will spend $11 billion to bring in the latest armaments.

WASHINGTON - A new congressional study shows that the Army lacks the active-duty troops to keep the current occupation force in Iraq past March, unless it gets extra help from either other services and reserves or other nations, or spends tens of billions of dollars to vastly expand its size. The study, released yesterday by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, said that if the Pentagon sticks to its plan of rotating active-duty Army troops out of Iraq after a year, it will be able to sustain a force of 67,000 to 106,000 using active duty and reserve Army and Marine forces.

WASHINGTON -- Confrontations with North Korea over its nuclear ambitions and with China over human rights threaten a keystone of President Clinton's foreign policy.More than any other recent president, Mr. Clinton has stressed the United States' interest in Asia, touting the region's economic growth and expanding markets as an engine of U.S. prosperity and of high-skill, high-wage jobs.Now, in a remote but no longer impossible scenario, Washington could risk a war on the Korean peninsula, loss of the world's fastest-growing market in China and aftershocks in Taiwan, Hong Kong and elsewhere in the Pacific.

BEIJING -- A North Korean diplomat used a rare news conference here yesterday to rail against a nonexistent 150-mile-long concrete "wall of division" that the South Koreans supposedly erected 20 years ago along the buffer zone between North and South.Chu Chang Jun, North Korea's longtime ambassador to China, demanded the "immediate dismantling of the cursed reinforced concrete wall that artificially bisects the nation that had lived in harmony generation after generation."In a "never to be pardoned criminal act," the wall was erected across the peninsula 20 years ago Dec. 29, he said.

TOKYO - After weeks of tense discussions, the United States and South Korea agreed yesterday to reposition American troops far away from the demilitarized zone that separates North and South Korea in a gradual process that will make them less vulnerable to attack by the North. The 14,000 troops, members of the United States' 2nd Infantry Division, have long been considered a strategic "tripwire" on the Korean peninsula, ensuring that American troops would be drawn into any war started by the North.

WE'VE ALREADY got atomic weapons, a North Korean envoy whispered to a U.S. diplomat in Beijing last week, strongly implying tests or sales could be the next escalation for the horrible little state. Talks among the two countries and China broke off early. What to do? As frightening as the prospect of Kim Jong Il gone nuclear - for now perhaps still a bluff - the best course is recommitment to the firm patience that the Bush administration has been showing. The worst response would be military action.