If there are future provocations, I don`t think we can be reserved because it would be hard to suppress them because they`re getting bolder and bolder...Singapore (ANTARA News/AFP) - South Korea warned on Saturday that it would respond "very strongly" to any further provocations by North Korea.
"If there are future provocations, I don`t think we can be reserved because it would be hard to suppress them because they`re getting bolder and bolder," South Korean Minister of National Defence Kim Kwan-Jin said.
Speaking at a regional security conference in Singapore, Kim said "we are trying to be proactively deterrent" in dealing with the communist North.
"So proactive deterrence means that if there is a provocation we will respond very strongly as an exercise of our jurisdiction rights, and we will defuse those provocative intents," Kim said through an interpreter.
The South Korean government was lambasted for its reserved response last year to the North`s shelling of the border island of Yeongpyeong as well as the sinking of the battleship Cheonan.
Kim`s comments in Singapore come on the heels of North Korea`s disclosure Wednesday of a secret meeting with the South in Beijing last month at which it said Seoul "begged" for three summits.
Analysts said the North`s revelation slammed the door on dialogue and embarrassed the South`s conservative government as well as damaging hopes of resuming multilateral nuclear disarmament talks any time soon.
At the security meeting in Singapore, US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said tensions on the Korean peninsula were in "danger of unpredictable escalation in the event of another provocation."
Gates said public opinion in South Korea "is much less tolerant of the possibility of turning the other cheek another time." (H-RN) (*)
Editor: Ella Syafputri
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