S.Korea, US launch war games despite N.Korean threats

Some 50 refugees in S.Korea diplomatic missions: activistsSeoul (AFP) March 8, 2010 - Some 50 North Korean refugees are taking refuge in South Korean diplomatic missions in China, living like prisoners because of security concerns, a Seoul rights group said Monday. Up to 30 of the total have stayed more than one year in the Beijing embassy or consulates elsewhere, said the Citizen's Coalition for Human Rights of Abductees and North Korean refugees. "The embassy restricts their movement and communication with relatives outside because of tight security and surveillance by Chinese police," coalition head Do Hee-Yeun told AFP. "They are living like prisoners inside," he said, adding China had intentionally delayed negotiations with South Korea about their departure to Seoul to show that the embassy is not a safe refuge. Virtually all North Korean refugees cross into China, but face forced repatriation if caught there and the risk of harsh punishment in their home country. Beijing's policy of treating the refugees as economic migrants has been strongly criticised by rights groups. The plight of refugees sheltered in the embassy has prompted South Korea's state human rights watchdog to start a probe. Activists claim Seoul has not been eager to address the issue for fear of creating diplomatic strains with Beijing. They have called for permission to exchange letters with North Korean refugees inside the embassy. The South's foreign ministry gave no figures but said it was trying hard to bring the refugees to Seoul and to improve their living conditions inside the mission. Many refugees leave China and travel on to Southeast Asian nations in the hope of eventual resettlement in South Korea. About 18,000 North Koreans have arrived in the South since the end of the 1950-1953 Korean War, the vast majority in recent years.

Tens of thousands of US and South Korean troops Monday began an annual military exercise despite threats from North Korea, which claims the drill is a preparation for nuclear war.The North's supreme military command announced it has placed its 1.2 million-strong armed forces on alert in response to the start of what it called "test nuclear war manoeuvres".
The ten-day Key Resolve/Foal Eagle drill involves 18,000 US troops, including 10,000 not based in Korea, and 20,000 South Korean troops, said a spokesman for the US-South Korean Combined Forces Command.
Numbers are smaller than last year and no US aircraft carrier will be involved, but the spokesman said the size of the drill was guided only by operational reasons.
South Korea and the United States, which stations 28,500 troops in the country, say the exercise is purely defensive.
The North habitually blasts it as a prelude to invasion and threatens counter-measures, although the war games normally pass off without major incident.
The communist state's military Sunday threatened "merciless physical force" in response to any attack and said it was no longer bound by the armistice that ended the 1950-53 Korean War.
It vowed to halt nuclear disarmament efforts and strengthen its atomic arsenal.
The North is under pressure to return to six-nation nuclear disarmament talks which it abandoned last April, a month before staging a second nuclear test.
On Monday the supreme command of the military, which is headed by national leader Kim Jong-Il, said troops have been alerted to repel any attack and "blow up the citadel of the aggressors" if ordered.
It called for regulars and reservists to undergo training "to mercilessly crush the aggressors should they intrude into the inviolable sky, land and sea of the DPRK (North Korea) even 0.001 mm".
South Korean officials said no unusual military movements had been reported in the North and border crossings were going ahead normally.
During last year's exercise the North three times cut off access to a jointly-run industrial park at Kaesong just north of the border.
Watched by riot police, some 20 activists rallied outside a US military base used as an exercise command post at Seongnam in Seoul's southern outskirts.
"Stop exercise aimed at attacking North Korea!" they shouted.