SOUTH KOREA/FILE: South Korea remembers the four victims killed in the North Korean shelling of Yeonpyeong Island three years ago

Record ID: 354055

  • Title: SOUTH KOREA/FILE: South Korea remembers the four victims killed in the North Korean shelling of Yeonpyeong Island three years ago
  • Date: 23rd November 2013
  • Summary: FLOWERS AND PORTRAITS OF VICTIMS
  • Embargoed: 8th December 2013 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Korea, Republic of
  • Country: South Korea
  • Topics: General
  • Reuters ID: LVA84W96P4WT5LPEVTZ7W0WNJ8BJ
  • Story Text: South Korea remembered the four victims on Saturday (November 23) who were killed when North Korea attacked on Yeonpyeong Island three years ago.
    More than 3,500 people including government officials, military officers and relatives of the victims gathered at Seoul's War Memorial and remembered the two marines and two civilians who lost their lives.
    South Korea's Prime Minister Chung Hong-won said in his address that South Korea had strengthened their defences.

    "We have made all-out efforts to strengthen our defense posture in order not have a recurrence of our people and territory being put under threat. We will continue to respond resolutely to any threats that endanger the safety of our people and our security," he said.

    "We once again urge North Korea to abandon its provocations and be on a path towards building permanent peace on the Korean Peninsula and achieving co-prosperity between South and North Korea," he added.
    North Korea fired scores of artillery shells at South Korea's Yeonpyeong island on Nov. 23, 2010, killing four people including two civilians, in one of the heaviest attacks on its neighbour since the Korean War ended in 1953.
    Kim Oh-bok, who lost her son, said she was heartbroken.

    "If he were alive by now, he would have been a 25-year-old man. I feel so sorry for him that he couldn't have an easy life for the rest of his life, instead he sacrificed his life and departed. As his mother, it's too sad and heartbreaking," she said.
    North Korea marked the third anniversary of the artillery attack on Friday (November 22) with a vow to respond to what it called any similar provocation with a strike on the South Korean presidential compound.
    The North has threatened to attack Seoul before but it is seen as highly unlikely as doing so would almost certainly trigger all-out war with the South and the United States which, under a defence treaty, stations 28,500 troops in the South.
    In 2010, the North said it was provoked into attacking Yeonpyeong, which is off the peninsula's west coast, because of a South Korean live-fire exercise in the area that dropped shells in its territorial waters.
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