President Park Geun-hye Tuesday called North Korea’s development of a submarine-launched ballistic missile a “serious challenge,” warning of “stern retaliation” against North Korea if provoked.
She also called on officials to maintain strong deterrence in cooperation with the United States over North Korea’s provocative acts, presidential spokesman Min Kyung-wook said in a written briefing.
About 28,500 U.S. troops are stationed in South Korea as deterrence against North Korea.
Park made the comment in a rare meeting of top security officials to discuss North Korea’s recent test-firing of a submarine-launched ballistic missile.
The participants included Park’s security adviser, the spy chief, the defense minister, the foreign minister and South Korea’s point man on North Korea, Min said.
The meeting — the first in a year — came three days after North Korea claimed that leader Kim Jong-un oversaw a successful underwater test-launching of a “strategic submarine ballistic missile.”
“North Korea’s development of a submarine-launched ballistic missile is a serious challenge that undermines stability on the Korean Peninsula and in Northeast Asia,” Park said, noting Pyongyang is banned from any ballistic missile activity under U.N. resolutions.
Park also called on the military to sternly retaliate against North Korea if provoked.
Her comments came days after North Korea threatened to fire without warning on South Korean naval vessels it accused of violating its territorial waters.
The inter-Korean border in the Yellow Sea has been the site of several bloody skirmishes between the navies of the two countries in the past, resulting in dozens of soldiers killed or wounded on both sides.
The North does not recognize the Yellow Sea border, commonly called the Northern Limit Line, drawn unilaterally by the U.S.-led U.N. forces at the end of the 1950-53 Korean War, which ended in a cease-fire, not a permanent peace treaty.
South Korea has repeatedly vowed to strongly retaliate against any provocations to avenge the deaths of 50 South Koreans, mostly soldiers, who were killed in two separate attacks by North Korea in March and November of 2010.
Also Tuesday, Park called for inter-Korean consultations to resolve a dispute over Pyongyang’s unilateral wage hike for its people working in a joint inter-Korean factory park in the North’s border city of Kaesong.
North Korea has decided to raise the minimum monthly wage to $74 for about 53,000 North Korean workers at the factory park, a move rejected by South Korea.
The two Koreas set the wage cap at 5 percent per year.
Currently, the North is requesting a 5.18 percent hike.
The factory park, which marries South Korea’s capital and technology with the North’s cheap labor, serves as a major legitimate revenue source for the cash-strapped communist country. (Yonhap)
