South Korea seeks UN action against Pyongyang for sinking of warship

An international team of investigators says that a North Korean submarine sank the 1,200-tonne Cheonan. Photograph: Hong Jin-Hwan/AFP/Getty
South Korea will take Pyongyang to the UN security council as part of measures it will pursue over the sinking of a warship blamed on a North Korean torpedo attack, officials said today.
An international team of investigators announced last week that a North Korean submarine had fired a homing torpedo on 26 March, tearing apart the 1,200-tonne Cheonan and killing 46 sailors on board. North Korea called the investigation results a fabrication and warned that any retaliation would trigger war.
South Korea's president, Lee Myung-bak, is to address the nation tomorrow on the "clear armed provocation" by North Korea and disclose his resolve to take "stern" action against the regime, according to his press adviser, Lee Dong-kwan.
The president will announce what measures South Korea plans to take against North Korea on its own and in co-operation with the international community, the adviser said.
The president "will also speak about referring [North Korea] to the UN security council", he said.
It is unclear what measures Seoul would solicit from the security council. In general, punitive measures against a country involved in provocative acts include economic sanctions and adopting a statement condemning its acts, a presidential official said on condition of anonymity.
The president will also announce that South Korea will take all available "strong counter-measures" if North Korea engages in further provocations, the adviser said.
Those measures may include large anti-submarine drills with the US near the site of the sinking, resuming propaganda broadcasts near the land border, drastically scaling back the remaining economic exchange programmes with the North, and barring North Korean vessels from its waters.
Any such action is certain to draw an angry response from the North, which has stepped up its war rhetoric in recent days over the sinking.
"The army and people of [North Korea] will never pardon the group of traitors getting hell-bent on confrontation and war [and who] dare taking issue with fellow countrymen," the North's main Rodong Sinmun newspaper said in a commentary today, carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.
It threatened to "crush" South Korea, calling its report on the Cheonan sinking an "enormous fabrication".
The two Koreas are still technically at war because their 1950-53 conflict ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty.
The tension comes amid a visit to the region by Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state. Clinton is in China where she faces a diplomatic struggle to win Beijing's support for penalising its ally for the sinking.
In Tokyo on Friday, Clinton said the evidence was "overwhelming" that North Korea was behind the sinking, and that the reclusive communist country must face international consequences.
She is expected in Seoul on Wednesday.