South Korea scrambled fighter jets and returned fire after North Korea lobbed dozens of shells into its territory, injuring four soldiers, Yonhap News reported. A South Korean Defense Ministry official, who declined to be identified, confirmed the shelling, without giving any further details. The military has been put on high alert and will “respond strongly” to further provocation, he said. Tensions with nuclear-armed North Korea have risen this year following the sinking of a South Korean warship in March that the U.S. and its allies blamed on a torpedo attack.
President Barack Obama dispatched his envoy on the country, Stephen Bosworth, to Asian capitals this week after reports by a U.S. scientist that North Korea had revealed to him a “stunning” new uranium-enrichment plant. The yen and Korean won weakened against the dollar, U.S. stock futures fell and Treasury futures rose as investors sought safe-haven investments following the report.
South Korean President Lee Myoung Bak called an emergency meeting, his office said. The visit by to the nuclear plant this month by Stanford University professor Siegfried S. Hecker showcased technological advances that highlight the failure of sanctions to force Kim Jong Il’s regime back to disarmament talks.
“The control room was astonishingly modern,” Stanford University professor Siegfried S. Hecker wrote in his Nov. 20 report of the visit eight days earlier to the main reactor site at Yongbyon. “We saw a modern, clean centrifuge plant of more than a thousand centrifuges,” he said, a reference to the high-speed spinning devices that enrich uranium.
