NKorea holds apparent artillery drill as US, SKorea talk

(Updated 2 p.m.) SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea launched apparent artillery drills Wednesday as the top US and South Korean military leaders held talks on the peninsula's security worries following a deadly North Korean artillery strike last month. As the US chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Navy Adm. Mike Mullen, and his South Korean counterpart Gen. Han Min-koo met behind closed doors in Seoul, North Korea staged apparent firing exercises near the disputed western sea border. North Korean shells landed in the country's own waters north of South Korea's Baengnyeong island, a South Korean military official said. He spoke on condition of anonymity, citing military rules. North Korea also carried out an apparent military exercise within sight of the South's Yeonpyeong Island last month following the artillery assault on the same island that killed four people. Artillery shots were heard three days later as Gen. Walter Sharp, the top US commander in South Korea, toured the island in a show of solidarity with Seoul and to survey damage. Mullen and Han, their militaries' top uniformed officers, met Wednesday morning, a military official said. They had been expected to discuss ways to deter future North Korean aggression, but the official did not give details of their discussions. Their meeting came amid tensions that have erupted on the divided peninsula after North Korea's Nov. 23 artillery barrage on Yeonpyeong Island near the sea border. The attack — the first since the 1950-53 Korean War to target a civilian area — killed two South Korean marines and two construction workers, and reduced many homes and shops to charred rubble. Meanwhile, the Obama administration announced that it would send its No. 2 diplomat and three other top officials to China next week for talks on North Korea. The trip comes as Washington presses a reluctant Beijing to do more to rein in its ally Pyongyang. Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg will lead the delegation to Beijing for the talks, the State Department said Tuesday. Earlier Tuesday, Steinberg gave a talk to a Washington think tank in which he urged China to press North Korea harder on halting provocative acts. The trip follows a meeting Monday between Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the foreign ministers of Japan and South Korea in which they called on the North to stop "belligerent" behavior, including last month's attack. They also rejected China's call for immediate talks with North Korea, saying the North first needed to prove its commitment to peace and return to six-nation nuclear disarmament talks. Steinberg will be accompanied to China by the top Asia official at the National Security Council, Jeffrey Bader, the top US diplomat for east Asia and the Pacific, Kurt Campbell, and the US special envoy for six-party talks, Sung Kim. After meeting with the Chinese in Beijing, Steinberg and Bader will return to Washington on Dec. 17. Campbell will travel to Tokyo for talks with Japanese officials, and Kim will see South Korean officials in Seoul. Pyongyang recently revealed a uranium enrichment facility — which could give it a second way to make atomic bombs. Despite that defiance, North Korea has indicated its readiness to resume the negotiations on providing the regime with much-needed aid and other concessions in exchange for disarmament. On Tuesday, South Korean President Lee Myung-bak promised to transform five islands that lie along the tense maritime border with North Korea into "military fortresses" impervious to North Korean attacks. Yeonpyeong Island is a tiny enclave of military bases and fishing communities along the Koreas' disputed sea border. The island, which went up in flames and was left a scene of destruction, remains a ghost town two weeks after the attack, with most of the 1,300 civilian residents seeking refuge on the mainland and many refusing to return. The two Koreas remain in a technical state of war because their three-year conflict ended in a truce, not a peace treaty. North Korea disputes the maritime border drawn by UN forces in 1953, and considers the waters around the front-line islands its territory. — AP