INCHEON, South Korea, (Reuters) – South Korean President Lee Myung-bak called an emergency meeting yesterday to contain the economic impact of an artillery attack by North Korea while the United States asked China to rein in Pyongyang.
Local media said the meeting of senior security and economic officials in Seoul would discuss ways to prevent tensions with North Korea from hurting Asia’s fourth-biggest economy, which is becoming more reliant on domestic consumer spending for growth as exports begin to lose steam.
In the United States, Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Washington was working with allies on ways to respond to the attack, adding: “It’s very important for China to lead.”
“The one country that has influence in Pyongyang is China and so their leadership is absolutely critical,” Mullen told a U.S. television talk show.
North Korea rained artillery shells on Tuesday at the island of Yeonpyeong, south of the disputed maritime boundary with the South. Two villagers were among the four killed, the first time civilians have died in an attack by the North since 1987.
The civilian deaths have added to the anger in the South.
“The biggest task of South Korea is to contain (North Korea’s) Kim dynasty so that they cannot cause a national, ethnic tragedy again,” the influential Chosun Ilbo daily said on Thursday.
“But South Korea failed to fulfill the task again this time.”
The newspaper also said China, reclusive North Korea’s only major ally, must take a more pro-active
stance in containing Pyongyang.
“If China does not put public pressure on North Korea, provocations by North Korea will continue. If the Korean peninsula is in flames, Chinese prosperity will shake from the bottom.”
Global markets have recovered from Tuesday’s attack, and the stock market opened up in Seoul on Thursday and looked likely to head back to pre-attack levels. However, the won currency remained under pressure due to lingering caution.
The United States has dispatched an aircraft carrier group headed by the USS George Washington to the Yellow Sea off the Korean peninsula to take part in joint drills with South Korea.
Although the U.S. Forces Korea said the exercise had been planned well before the attack, many thought the move would enrage the North and unsettle China.
Beijing has said previously that it sees any joint U.S.-South Korea exercises in the waters between the Korean peninsula and China as a threat to its security and to regional stability.
CHINA’S ROLE KEY
China has long propped up the Pyongyang leadership, worried that a collapse of the North could bring instability to its own borders. Beijing is and also wary of a unified Korea that would be dominated by the United States, the key ally of the South.
