Jang Gee-Yeon, a tanker-driver on the island of Yeonpyeong, wasn’t scared at first when the North Korean shells started landing. “We’d been told there were going to be exercises, so I thought it was just a misfire,” he said. “Then I got a call saying it was real. I was in shock. I ran up to the village and it was burning in at least thirty places. There could have been more. The smoke was so thick, I couldn’t see everywhere.” The island only has one small fire engine, so Jang and his colleagues decided to convert their tanker into a lashed-up pump. “We fixed it up so we could spray water from it,” he said. “I drove. There was nobody else. We got a hose and we put out five house fires and three fires on the mountain above the village. We were looking up the whole time, worried that another bomb would land on top of us.” If Hollywood ever needs somewhere to start World War Three, Yeonpyeong would be a good choice. North Korea is in plain view, about as far away as Portsmouth is from Ryde. A notice at the ferry terminal warns you to call a hotline number if you see enemy frogmen. On Tuesday afternoon, from an artillery base close enough to be visible through binoculars, the North Koreans launched a rather more direct assault. A whole street of houses and shops in the village stands charred and ruined. Blackened bar-stools and twisted bicycles show the force of the blast, and even three days later the smell of burning remained. Dogs, some of them wounded, run or limp through the streets, abandoned by their owners in the panic to get away. The village is empty of all but journalists. On the boat back, I spoke to a policeman who collected the bodies of the two civilians killed. “One of them was just a totally burnt-out shell, a skeleton,” he said. “The other was scattered, blown apart.” According to local media, the North Koreans used “hyperbaric,” or fuel-air, explosives – rare and unusually destructive weapons, only just this side of breaching international law. But then the attack itself, Pyongyang’s first, in its own words, “precisely aimed” land assault onSouth Korea's civilians since the end of the war in 1953, broke wholly new and dangerous ground. In the five days since it happened, South Koreans’ behaviour has mirrored that of Jang Gee-Yeon. Like the tanker driver, they were quite slow to react. The South Korean military took 13 minutes to return fire. President Lee Myung-bak’s first response was emollient: the country should, he said, “carefully manage the situation to prevent an escalation of the clash.” Street protests and manifestations of public outrage were notable by their absence. But over the last forty-eight hours, the fear and tension here have grown. The country has almost palpably decided to get angry and scared. The defence minister resigned, or was sacked. Yesterday and on Friday, spreading demonstrations demanded stronger action from the government. In-Jae Lee, the mayor of Paju, only a few miles from the North Korean border, said the demo in his town was “not a protest, but a shout for survival.” He added: “If a government does not show strong resolution, then it is not capable of protecting its people.” In Seoul, the capital, a few hundred former soldiers fought the police. Also yesterday, at the televised funeral of the two marines who were the raid’s other casualties, their top commander, Major-General You Nak-jun, promised to “repay North Korea a hundred and thousand-fold” for their deaths. The national alert status has been raised to Watchcon 2, the second-highest level. In this, perhaps the world’s most technologically-enabled country, even drivers are obsessively watching the rolling news channels, on little screens in their cars – and 22 people have been charged with spreading war rumours online or on Twitter. Sunday, probably around the time you are reading this, will be the hour of maximum danger. The US aircraft carrier George Washington is due to arrive in the Yellow Sea, scene of Tuesday’s attack, for live-firing exercises with the South Koreans, a move announced by President Obama in his response to the attack. The ship’s flight deck covers four and a half acres. The crew of this one vessel is a fifth the size of the entire, post-defence-review Royal Navy. It alone carries just under half the number of fast jets as will be in service in the entire, post-defence-review RAF. The war-games will take place in a part of the sea at least fifty miles south of Yeonpyeong, but that hasn’t stopped North Korea threatening to turn them into a conflict for real. “The situation is inching closer to the brink of war due to the reckless plan of those trigger-happy elements to stage again the war exercises targeted against the (North),” the state news agency said, calling it an “unpardonable provocation” and promising a “shower of dreadful fire.” Hundreds of residents from South Korea’s other Yellow Sea islands last night poured into the west coast port of Incheon, evacuated by coastguard ships and scrambling for places on the last ferries, not willing to take the risk that Pynongyang is bluffing. In one of those only-in-Korea touches they, and their counterparts who came earlier in the week from Yeonpyeong, are being given emergency accommodation in Spa World, a local 24-hour public sauna. These places, far more wholesome than their British equivalents, are common standbys here for people who miss their last trains or need a cheap night’s sleep. Upstairs, naked health enthusiasts relaxed as usual in the hot springs, middle-class teenagers took swimming lessons and pensioners sat dangling their feet in a pool stocked with little fish which come and nibble, health-givingly, at your lower limbs. Downstairs was for the people who had lost their homes and livelihoods. Lying on thin sleeping mats beneath a giant plastic tree, with joggers pounding on treadmills the other side of a glass partition, the refugees poured out their frustration, as much with their own government as with North Korea’s. “Why do they have to bring that aircraft carrier here?” asked Seo Hyeon. “We are in the middle. It’s been like this for ever – they are not protecting us properly.” The ambiguity of this complaint – wanting protection and strong action from the government, but also fearing its consequences, along with a deep distrust of the United States – pretty much sums up South Korea’s dilemma. However much the North may attack South Korea’s “outrageous provocations,” those are, in fact, Pyongyang’s speciality. In March, it attacked a South Korean naval ship, killing 46 sailors. Further in the past, it has also landed commandos by submarine on the South Korean coast; bombed a South Korean airliner, killing 115; assassinated four South Korean cabinet ministers; attempted to kill the then President (three times); and succeeded in killing his wife. After each outrage, South Korean leaders have promised fire-and-brimstone retaliation; after each, they have done little or nothing. Kang Won-taek, professor of politics at Seoul National University, says: “North Korea has nothing to lose, while we have everything to lose. [President] Lee has no choice but to soften his tone to keep this country peaceful. It is not an appealing choice, but it is the only realistic choice.” Seoul is itself only a few miles further from the North than Yeonpyeong island: it’s as if, in the Cold War, the Soviet Union began at St Albans. The capital’s 19 million people are comfortably within range of the same artillery that fired on Yeonpyeong; the roads north of the city are lined with exploding bridges and concrete blocks to hold back North Korean tanks. The conventional wisdom is that this latest crisis will end like all the others. The South will do nothing to escalate the conflict. Nor will Pyongyang; its famously rabid rhetoric will prove as empty as always. North Korea’s dictator, Kim Jong-il, in this theory, is merely trying to boost his twentysomething heir, Kim Jong-un, or win more food aid for his starving people, or get some sort of deal which he can trade for nuclear concessions. China, Pyongyang’s closest ally, will keep it from doing anything too stupid. The trouble is, the conventional wisdom could be wrong. If North Korea does make some further attack, today or soon, it may now be impossible for the South not to retaliate. And for all the North’s rhetoric, its actual provocations do appear to be increasing in both frequency and intensity. The idea that you can do some sort of deal with Pyongyang is empirically wrong; on its nuclear programme, it has never kept its promises. And China has criticised the US carrier deployment too. Nikolas Gvosdev, of the Globalsecurity think-tank, says: “The North Korean volcano’s past dormancy these many years is no guarantee of future quiet. If these incidents were a test by the North Koreans of the South’s resolve - and of Washington’s willingness to become involved – will the lack of a forceful response be seen as a prudent measure, or as weakness?” Today and for the next few weeks, South Korea and the world can only hope that Pyongyang does not decide on a further test of resolve.South Korea: despatch from the frontline of World War Three
This week's bombardment from their volatile northern neighbours has left South Koreans tired of turning the other cheek, reports Andrew Gilligan in Incheon
Monday, 29 November 2010
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