U.S. and South Korean ships have begun joint military exercises in the Yellow Sea, as tensions between North Korea and South Korean—and the rest of the region rise. North Korea's official Korean Central News Agency said that the exercises were "no more than an attempt to find a pretext for aggression and ignite a war at any cost" and added they "are putting the Korean Peninsula at a state of ultra-emergency." This comes after the Tuesday incident where North Korea fired artillery at South Korea's Yeonpyeong Island.
The U.S. aircraft carrier, the USS George Washington, entered the exercise area with South Korean warships. The North Korean news agency says the U.S. is trying to escalate the situation, "No sooner had the Yeonpyeong incident occurred than the U.S. announced that it would stage joint naval exercises with the South Korean puppet forces with the nuclear-powered carrier George Washington involved in the West Sea of Korea as if it had been waiting for it to happen... This clearly indicates that the U.S. was the arch-criminal who deliberately planned the incident and wire-pulled it behind the scene," and accused South Korea of using civilians as "human shields" at its military bases (two South Korean marines and two civilians were killed on Tuesday).
China, North Korea's trading partner and ally, has proposed an emergency meeting for North Korea, South Korea, China, Russia, Japan and the United States, which are the country's involved in nuclear talks. The Washington Post reports, "China has been under intense pressure to rein in its often erratic ally, North Korea, and Beijing this weekend was engaged in an intense round of diplomacy -- including sending Beijing's top foreign policy official, Dai Bingguo, to Seoul for meetings -- trying to prevent this current crisis from escalating into a full-scale conflict...But the call for new talks, announced in Beijing at an unusual Sunday afternoon press briefing by Chinese nuclear negotiator Wu Dawei, received a chilly response here in Seoul."
