US And SKorea Launching War Games

North Korea expressed renewed outrage over the Yellow Sea drills.

The war games are a “pretext for aggression and ignite a war at any cost,” the National Peace Committee of Korea said in a statement carried Sunday by the official Korean Central News Agency.

Hours earlier, the rattle of new artillery fire from North Korea sent residents, journalists, police and troops scrambling for cover on Yeonpyeong Island. None of the rounds landed on the island, military officials said, but the incident showed how tense the situation remains.

Saying they could not guarantee the journalists’ safety, South Korea’s Defense Ministry sent a ship to ferry them off the island but bad weather forced them to cancel the evacuation. About 380 people, including 28 islanders and 190 journalists, remained on Yeonpyeong on Sunday, officials said.

via Yahoo

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North Korea Ready For War Provokes U.S.

Nov. 26) — Thunderous booms from North Korean artillery have rattled the remote fishing island at the center of the Koreas’ latest standoff for a second time this week, as Pyongyang warned “trigger-happy” U.S. forces that their upcoming military drills with the South inch the peninsula “closer to the brink of war.”

The sounds of bombardment sent civilians on Yeonpyeong Island running for cover today, but no shells landed on the island, and it appears the booms were part of a North Korean naval drill out at sea. Still, the firing frayed nerves, while the top U.S. military commander in South Korea, Gen. Walter Sharp, toured the island and surveyed damage from Tuesday’s artillery barrage that killed four people, two South Korean marines and two civilians.

While naval skirmishes have been somewhat frequent along the Koreas’ disputed sea border, Tuesday’s bombardment was the first time since the 1950-53 Korean War that civilians have been targeted. Dozens of homes and huge swaths of forest were incinerated in the hour-long attack.

Sharp’s visit is part of U.S. efforts to bolster its ally Seoul ahead of a four-day joint military exercise between U.S. and South Korean forces that begins Sunday. The USS George Washington, one of the largest aircraft carriers in the world, is speeding toward the Yellow Sea in order to take part.

via AOL