On Memorial Day, North Korea detonated a nuclear bomb, Iran deployed six warships to the Persian Gulf, and Obama played golf.
The Norks have been rattling their sabers, and are expected to tst-launch a misski within the next two weeks that is capable of hitting Hawaii and Alaska. Meanwhile, South Korea is preparing for the worst.
It was obvious that something was up when the Chinese scarpered. One day there were scores of their fishing boats hoovering up the valuable crabs from the richest of the fishing grounds in the Yellow Sea.
Overnight all but a handful were gone.
Anywhere else the locals would have been glad to have the crabs to themselves but this is no ordinary fishing ground. A few yards from here is the maritime boundary between South and North Korea. “The Chinese fish here because the North Koreans allow them,” a coastguard official said. “If they’ve gone it’s because they’ve had some kind of warning.”
An imminent missile launch into the sea? An armed incursion of North Korean ships? A full-scale invasion of Yeonpyeong, the small South Korean island hard up against the maritime boundary? Too much blood has already been shed in these waters for anyone to risk taking any chances, and for the past week South Korea has been dispatching reinforcements.
No one will discuss numbers for security reasons but sailors and marines, as well as members of the Sea Special Attack Team, the coastguard’s commando force, have been arriving to join the several hundred troops already on Yeonpyeong.
These waters, around the Northern Limit Line, have become the most tense and dangerous patch of sea in Asia.
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