South Korea plans to stage live fire-drills on the same island that was shelled last month in an exchange of fire with the North.
China and Russia have been calling for a restart of six-party peace talks to resolve the tensions in the region.Hostility has been escalating since March, when the North was accused of sinking a South Korean warship.That was followed by several rounds of naval exercises between the US and South Korean forces, which Pyongyang called a provocation.Expert on Korea affairs Tim Beal says by staging the drills, the US is deliberately stoking the situation in an attempt to goad China, and spark a war.“The Americans don’t need so much firepower against North Korea, which is really a very weak country, military speaking,” he argued.“If there is a war between South Korea and North Korea, the United States is inevitably getting involved. And if the Americans are involved, we are getting, in a sense, a repeat of 1950, when the Americans attempted to take control of the peninsula and the Chinese warned them off, and the warning was not heard, or disregarded, and so the Chinese intervened. The consequences are so powerful, so catastrophic, that we presume that it’s not going to happen. But I think the underlying drivers are there that are pushing the situation perilously close to war.”