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The U.N. Security Council adopted a statement Friday condemning the attack that led to the sinking of a South Korean warship without directly linking North Korea to the incident. The 15-member council unanimously approved the statement one day after five veto-wielding members, including the North's major ally China, agreed to a draft statement. China succeeded in diluting the statement, as it did not point the finger at North Korea and included North Korea's denial of involvement in the incident, which killed 46 sailors in the Yellow Sea in March. "The Security Council condemns the attack which led to the sinking...

South Korea and the United States will stage large-scale anti-submarine drills in the Yellow Sea after the United Nations takes action against Pyongyang for sinking of the South Korean warship Cheonan, Yonhap news agency said. "The joint drills will be carried out after the U N Security Council takes measure against North Korea," the agency quoting Col. Lee Bung Woo said. The United States’s 97,000-ton USS George Washington, an Aegis-equipped destroyer, and a nuclear-powered submarine are reportedly participating in the joint naval drills and a 4,500-ton destroyer, a submarine and F-15K fighter jets will take part from the South Korean...

South Korea and the United States are expected to fix dates for their joint naval exercises after assessing progress in Seoul's diplomatic efforts to rebuke North Korea at the U.N. Security Council, an official here said Monday. The two countries agreed last month to hold the drills after a multinational team of investigators blamed North Korea for torpedoing a South Korean warship, the Cheonan, in the Yellow Sea on March 26. The attack left 46 sailors dead. Seoul has referred the incident to the Security Council, urging its members to punish North Korea. "The dates for the joint exercises are...

South Korean President Lee Myung-bak and Foreign Minister Yu Myung-hwan are expected to ratchet up diplomatic efforts to garner international support for a UN reprimand of North Korea during this weekend’s G-20 Summit in Toronto. Seoul has asked the UN Security Council to officially condemn Pyongyang for the fatal March 26 attack on South Korean warship Cheonan, an accusation Pyongyang has furiously denied. After two Koreas held dueling briefings to push their own versions of the story to member countries at the UN Security Council, negotiations came to a temporary halt this week as the ambassadors of the member countries...

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Friday called for a "thorough investigation" of the sinking of the South Korean Navy corvette Cheonan before taking any action against North Korea. Speaking to the Wall Street Journal, Medvedev said, "Although only one version has been broadly circulated, we should not take it immediately for granted. A thorough investigation is needed." The sinking, which claimed the lives of 46 South Korean sailors, was "tragic," he said, adding that the "hypothesis" that it was torpedoed by "a neighboring country" -- i.e. North Korea -- is one of the possible scenarios. "As soon as the results...

South Korea and the United States have agreed to stage joint naval exercises later this month in the West Sea, an official at the Ministry of National Defense said Friday. “We’ve decided to stage joint naval drills in the final week of this month,” the official said. “U.S. warships belonging to the U.S. 7th Fleet, including an aircraft carrier, will join the drills as planned before.” The two governments were originally scheduled to hold naval exercises, including a joint anti-submarine drill, in early June in a show of force against possible North Korean provocation in waters near the sea border....

The South Korean Navy has recovered debris that could have come from its space rocket that may have exploded during ascent, the government said Friday. The Ministry of Education, Science and Technology said that debris was picked up from international waters south of Jeju Island. No details have been given as to what type of debris was collected from the water or what time it was found. Because the outer shell of the rocket is 2 millimeters thick, there is a chance that some parts of the rocket may float. The Naro-1 rocket made with Russian cooperation blasted off from...

The night a torpedo-armed North Korean submarine allegedly sank a South Korean patrol ship, the U.S. and South Korea were engaged in joint anti-submarine warfare exercises just 75 miles away, military officials told The Associated Press. The blast that sank the Cheonan, the worst South Korean military disaster since the 1950-53 Korean War, showed how impoverished nations such as North Korea can still inflict heavy casualties on far better equipped and trained forces, even those backed by the might of the U.S. military. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Friday that plans for more joint U.S.-South Korea anti-submarine exercises, announced after...

United States and South Korea may hold additional military exercises in response to North Korea's alleged sinking of one of Seoul's warships, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said on Thursday. US and South Korean officials were discussing possibly holding special exercises, including some focused on anti-submarine warfare, in the aftermath of the sinking of the Cheonan, Gates told reporters on his plane before arriving in Singapore. "The exercises that are being discussed in Washington and between Washington and Seoul would be some additional exercises beyond the routine exercises" regularly held with South Korea's military, he said. Gates said there were no...

US aircraft carrier will join a major anti-submarine naval exercise with South Korea next week in a show of strength to North Korea after the sinking of a warship, reports said Wednesday. South Korea, which accuses the North of torpedoing its ship Cheonan in March with the loss of 46 lives, is also mounting a diplomatic drive at the United Nations but indicated it would not seek new sanctions. The USS George Washington will leave its base in the Japanese port of Yokosuka around Saturday and arrive in the Yellow Sea early next week, Yonhap news agency quoted a military...

Surprised by how easily a South Korean warship was sunk by what an international investigation concluded was a North Korean torpedo fired from a midget submarine, senior American officials say they are planning a long-term program to plug major gaps in the South’s naval defenses. The discovery of the weaknesses in South Korea caught officials in both countries off guard. As South Korea has rocketed into the ranks of the world’s top economies, it has invested billions of dollars to bolster its defenses and to help refine one of the oldest war plans in the Pentagon’s library: a joint strategy...

Russian experts arrived in Seoul on Monday to review findings of an investigation that blamed North Korea for the deadly sinking of a South Korean warship, as the South sought to build support for U.N. punishment of the North. If Russia endorses the multinational probe's conclusions, the move could convince China and other major powers to support possible U.N. sanctions against Pyongyang for the sinking two months ago of the Cheonan, which killed 46 sailors. The South Koreans shared the investigation's findings with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao last weekend before a summit, but Beijing has yet to blame North Korea...

North Korea said Thursday that it was cutting off a naval hot line that was intended to prevent clashes near its disputed sea border with South Korea. Meanwhile, the South conducted a large naval drill in a show of force. A South Korean naval vessel dropped depth charges during a drill in the seas off Taean on Thursday. Cutting the link, established in 2004 after deadly skirmishes in 1999 and 2002, raises the chances of an armed clash in the tense waters off the western coast of the Korean Peninsula — something the North has said could happen any time,...

In the duel between North and South Korea, the question now is who will pull the trigger first? The answer may be neither, but don't count on it. The dueling now focuses on two quite different flashpoints. The first is the West or Yellow Sea, where North Korea has vowed to open fire against any South Korean vessel intruding in its waters. One issue there is how to define which waters are North Korean. The North refuses to recognize the Northern Limit Line, set by the United Nations Command after the Korean War (1950-1953) and challenged by North Korea in...

South Korea fired artillery and dropped bombs in military exercises off the west coast of the divided Korean peninsula today, with tensions running high in the area after an alleged North Korean submarine torpedo attack on a southern warship. The drills aim to help the military detect incursions by the north's submarines, follow the findings of an international investigation into the sinking of the Cheonan on 26 March in which 46 sailors died. The navy said 10 vessels including a destroyer fired guns and launched anti-submarine bombs south of the capital, Seoul, in a one-day exercise. The exercises were conducted...

South Korea has concluded that a North Korean torpedo sank one of its warships in March, killing 46 sailors, according to government officials and domestic news reports on Tuesday. South Korean officials are preparing to announce the results of their investigation later this week. The much anticipated finding will accuse North Korea of committing one of the worst military provocations on the Korean Peninsula since the end of the Korean War, deepening tensions between the countries. North Korea, denying involvement in the sinking, has vowed to retaliate against any attempt to link it with the March 26 explosion that broke...

The South Korean Navy fired warning shots Saturday night after two North Korean patrol boats crossed into South Korean waters, state media said. The two North Korean patrol boats separately crossed a maritime border in the Yellow Sea. One retreated after receiving a warning communication from the South Korean Navy, and the other retreated after two rounds of warning shots were fired, Seoul's Joint Chiefs of Staff told the state-run Yonhap news agency. Tensions between the two nations have run high since the mysterious sinking of a South Korean warship in the border area on March 26. Fifty-eight men escaped...

South Korea, alarmed at what appears to be the North Korean use of a Yu-3 type torpedo to sink one of their warships, has undertaken to reform their armed forces to better deal with tactics like this. North Korea officially denies having anything to do with the loss of the 1200 ton corvette Cheonan, but most North Koreans accept the fact that North Korea did the deed, and northerners are proud of that. Examination of the salvaged wreckage made it clear that it was an external explosion, using military grade explosives, that sank the ship and killed 46 sailors on...

Korea and the United States are in sync over ways to deal with the sinking of a South Korean warship, which left 46 sailors dead on the sea border with North Korea in March, a senior South Korean official said Friday. Lee Yong-joon, deputy foreign minister, did not elaborate, just saying, "Details will be released after the outcome of the probe (of the sinking) is announced." North Korea is suspected to be behind the sinking of the 1,200-ton Cheonan, although an international team of South Korean, U.S. and Australian specialists has not yet determined the cause. The investigation is being...

Beijing is approaching the sinking of the South Korean warship Cheonan with caution to avoid damaging its relations with its fraternal communist neighbor North Korea, U.S. officials say. In this April 24, 2010 file photo, a giant offshore crane salvages the bow section of the South Korean naval ship Cheonan off Baengnyeong Island, South Korea. AP/Yonhap, Choi Jae-Ku Chinese President Hu Jintao offered sympathetic remarks on the sinking of the Cheonan during a meeting with South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak at the opening of the Shanghai World Expo. But Chinese state-run media did not report Hu's comments. According to non-Chinese...