- A North Korean navy ship off a North Korean village on Friday, seen from South Korea.
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- Smoke is seen rising from North Korean territory on Friday, after an explosion was heard and seen from South Korea’s Yeonpyeong island.
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In a statement from its Foreign Ministry, China warned against “any military acts in our exclusive economic zone without permission,” the state-run Xinhua news agency reported Friday. But virtually all the waters to the west of the Korean Peninsula, where the United States said the exercises would take place, lie within that zone, and American naval traffic is far from uncommon there.
Adding yet more tension to the situation, the North’s state-run media also warned that the maneuvers could push the Korean Peninsula closer to “the brink of war.”
The West has hoped that China would use its leverage as the North’s traditional ally to press it to refrain from further attacks, but the Chinese statement on Friday failed even to criticize the North for its shelling on Tuesday of a garrison island that is also home to about 1,350 civilians, mainly fishermen. The attack killed four people.
The Chinese foreign minister, Yang Jiechi, met with the North Korean ambassador on Friday and spoke by phone with his South Korean and American counterparts, but few details emerged about the content of their conversations. A State Department spokesman said that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton had called Mr. Yang.
Xinhua reported that Mr. Yang stressed that China was “very concerned” about the situation, saying, “The pressing task now is to put the situation under control and prevent a recurrence of similar incidents.”
In a statement about the joint naval exercises, which are scheduled to begin on Sunday, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, Hong Lei, said: “We hold a consistent and clear-cut stance on the issue. We oppose any party to take any military acts in our exclusive economic zone without permission.”
This introduced into the mix China’s decade-old efforts to equate economic waters, which usually extend about 200 nautical miles off a country’s coast, with territorial waters, which usually reach about 12 nautical miles off a coast. In 2001, Chinese fighters intercepted and collided with a United States spy plane flying outside territorial waters but inside the economic zone, saying the American plane had violated China’s sovereignty.
A statement from the United States Navy’s Seventh Fleet, issued in apparent anticipation of Chinese complaints about the exercise, listed the number of times American aircraft carriers had operated in the waters west of the Korean Peninsula, including a mission in October 2009. The statement also noted that American aircraft carriers frequently visited South Korea and conducted port visits, including the aircraft carrier George Washington earlier this year, the John C. Stennis in March 2009, and the Ronald Reagan, the Nimitz and the George Washington in 2008.
The United States, which had already sent the George Washington to the region in response to the North Korean attack, made another show of solidarity with the South on Friday; the commander of American forces in South Korea, Gen. Walter L. Sharp, visited Yeonpyeong Island to survey the damage from the hourlong bombardment on Tuesday, which killed two civilians and two South Korean marines.
But North Korea remained defiant, firing off artillery rounds right after the general’s visit. The rounds did not fall on South Korean territory, but rattled nerves on the island nonetheless.
A spokesman for the South Korean Defense Ministry, Kwon Ki-hyeon, said the shots appeared to stay within North Korean territory, suggesting that they had been part of a drill or perhaps an effort to frighten the South Korean garrison on the island, which lies within sight of the North Korean mainland.
News flashes about the new artillery fire set off a brief wave of alarm in Seoul, where Tuesday’s attack has stirred anxiety and outrage. Local television there has been inundated with images of the damage to the island’s once tranquil fishing town, where rows of homes had collapsed or been blackened by fire.
Most of the island’s 1,600 civilian residents have fled, leaving only a few dozen mostly elderly holdouts, some of whom were shown scurrying into bomb shelters when the artillery was heard Friday. They told local TV stations that the barrage on Tuesday turned the town into a “sea of fire,” sending stunned and panicked residents running into the streets in confusion.
Video showed shattered furniture and scattered children’s toys amid the rubble, and deserted streets whose only sign of movement was a few stray dogs. While much of the town was undamaged, the attack seemed aimed at important civilian structures like a supermarket and a post office, the reports said.
The scenes of civilian destruction and of the mothers of the dead civilians wailing at their funerals have driven home the threat posed by the North to a greater extent than previous provocations, like the sinking of a South Korean warship in March, which involved only military casualties.
Many of the rounds shot by the North during the hourlong attack struck Yeonpyeong’s garrison of 1,000 South Korean marines, who are dug in around the island in concrete bunkers and machine-gun nests. Local TV showed photos taken during the barrage, in which fortified bunkers were engulfed in fireballs and pockmarked by exploding shrapnel.
The renewed shooting and stern warning by the North on Friday have raised concerns here that the North could respond violently to the naval exercises on Sunday.
American officials have been encouraging China to use its influence with North Korea to urge restraint. On Friday, Mrs. Clinton called her Chinese counterpart, Mr. Yang, American officials said. “Secretary Clinton urged China to send a clear message that the North’s behavior is unacceptable,” said the State Department’s spokesman, Philip J. Crowley.
Mr. Yang also met on Friday with the North Korean ambassador in Beijing and had telephone conversations with the South Korean foreign minister. “The pressing task now is to put the situation under control and prevent a recurrence of similar incidents,” Mr. Yang said in a statement.
North Korea represents a difficult foreign policy challenge for China. Among other things, China continues to stand by its neighbor for fear that its collapse would extend the boundaries of pro-Western South Korea to China’s borders.
“The record is very clear: China is not going to implement any measures that impose any costs on North Korea,” said Daniel Pinkston, North Asia analyst for the International Crisis Group. “What else is there left for North Korea to do? Missile tests, a nuclear program and now an artillery attack.”
The South Korean government has come under intense criticism domestically for an inadequate retaliation for the attack on Tuesday. South Korean officials said their forces were unable to fully respond because they had been trained and equipped to thwart an amphibious assault, not a prolonged artillery bombardment. Only three of the garrison’s half-dozen 155-millimeter cannons were able to shoot back, officials said.
Stung by the criticism, the South Korean president, Lee Myung-bak, ordered reinforcements to Yeonpyeong and four nearby islands, as well as more heavy weapons, and has already replaced his defense minister.
The exercise was announced over the summer without a date’s being set; that announcement was expected around now. But after North Korea shelled the island, President Obama announced the date, making it a sign of Washington’s resolve to support its ally in Seoul.
In its final form, the joint exercise will take the same shape as had been planned since the summer, according to military officers, and has not been altered by the North Korean attack.
Starting on Sunday, the George Washington, which makes its home port in Yokosuka, Japan, and sails with a complete wing of combat aircraft, will lead four other American surface warships in the exercise with the South Korean Navy.