Aussies take up cheap flights to Korea

Aussie tourists are among the foreigners still happy to travel to South Korea, despite recent tension with the North. Picture: AFP / KIM JAE-HWAN Source: AFP

THE US says North Korea is preparing for an imminent ballistic missile test, but that hasn't stopped Aussie budget travellers snapping up cheap flights to Seoul.

Last month Scoot airlines launched a service from  Coolangatta to the South Korean capital of Seoul and  Aussie adventure seekers have snapped up all discount seats for the first and most for the second month, The Gold Coast Bulletin reports.

There are few seats available on the route from May 29, the day the service kicks off, until the end of the following month.

MORE MISSILE LAUNCHERS DETECTED IN NORTH KOREA.

And travellers now need to pay as much as $665.23 a person if they want to fly economy class with the low-cost carrier in June to Seoul.

An online search of rival Air Asia X shows flights to South Korea remain popular with travellers with few discount seats available.

South Korean activists hold a banner showing pictures of South Korean President Park Geun-Hye and North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un, during a rally urging regular operations of the Kaesong joint industrial complex on the road leading to North Korea at a military checkpoint in the border city of Paju. Picture: AFP/ JUNG YEON-JE

This comes despite North Korea telling foreigners that they should prepare to evacuate and issuing warnings about the possible "thermonuclear war" that could be on the way.

Korean politics expert Professor Andrew O'Neil, who will visit South Korea next week, said he was not surprised others were going ahead with trips as some had a blase attitude to the situation due to the region's long history of conflict.

"There has been trouble over there since the 1950s," he said. "So it is difficult for people to know when it is really serious."

Read more about Aussie travellers snapping up cheap flights to Korea despite warning in The Gold Coast Bulletin.

An Australian tourist boarding a flight for Pyongyang says he is not worried about Korean tension.

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N Korea urges foreigners to leave

US Army soldiers gather during annual military drills in Yeoncheon, South Korea, near the border with North Korea on April 9, as North Korea urged foreigners to evacuate the country. Picture: AP Source: AP

NORTH Korea urged all foreigners in South Korea to evacuate, saying the two countries are on the verge of nuclear war.

The new threat appeared to be an attempt to keep the region on tenterhooks over its intentions.

Analysts see a direct attack on Seoul as extremely unlikely, and there are no overt signs that North Korea's 1.2 million-man army is readying for war, let alone a nuclear one.

South Korea's military has reported missile movements on North Korea's east coast but nothing pointed toward South Korea.

Still, North Korea's earlier warning that it won't be able to guarantee the safety of foreign diplomats after April 10 has raised fears that it will conduct a missile or nuclear test today, resulting in US retaliation.

The United States and South Korea have raised their defence postures, and so has Japan, which deployed PAC-3 missile interceptors in key locations around Tokyo yesterday as a precaution against possible North Korean ballistic missile tests.

"The situation on the Korean Peninsula is inching close to a thermonuclear war due to the evermore undisguised hostile actions of the United States and the south Korean puppet warmongers and their moves for a war against" the North, said a statement by the North Korean Asia-Pacific Peace Committee, an organisation that deals with regional matters.

The statement is similar to past threats that analysts call an attempt to raise anxiety in foreign capitals. Observers say a torrent of North Korean prophecies of doom and efforts to raise war hysteria are partly to boost the image of young and relatively untested leader Kim Jong-un at home, and to show him as a decisive military leader.

Another reason could be to use threats of war to win Pyongyang-friendly policy changes in Seoul and Washington. Last week, North Korea told foreign diplomats in Pyongyang that it will not be able to guarantee their safety as of Wednesday. It is not clear what the significance of that date is.

Tourists continued to arrive in Pyongyang despite the war hysteria.

Australian Mark Fahey of Sydney said he was not concerned about a possible war.

"I knew that when I arrived here it would probably be very different to the way it was being reported in the media," he told The Associated Press at Pyongyang airport. He said his family trusts him to make the right judgment but "my colleagues at work think I am crazy."

Chu Kang Jin, a Pyongyang resident, said everything is calm in the city.

"Everyone, including me, is determined to turn out as one to fight for national reunification ... if the enemies spark a war," he said, in a typically nationalist rhetoric that most North Koreans use while speaking to the media.

In Seoul, South Korean Presidential spokeswoman Kim Haing told reporters that the North Korean warning amounted to "psychological warfare."

"We know that foreigners residing in South Korea as well as our nationals are unfazed," she said.

South Korean President Park Geun-hye, who has sought to re-engage North Korea with dialogue and aid since taking office in February, expressed exasperation with what she called the "endless vicious cycle" of Seoul answering Pyongyang's hostile behaviour with compromise, only to get more hostility.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Tuesday described the tensions as "very dangerous," and said that any small incident caused by miscalculation may "create an uncontrollable situation."

Also Tuesday, North Korea said it was suspending work at the Kaesong industrial park near its border, which is combines South Korean technology and know-how with North Korea's cheap labour. North Korea pulled out more than 50,000 workers from the complex, the only remaining product of economic cooperation between the two countries that started about a decade ago when relations were much warmer.

Other projects from previous eras of cooperation such as reunions of families separated by war and tours to a scenic North Korean mountain stopped in recent years.
 

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N Korea urges foreigners to leave

US Army soldiers gather during annual military drills in Yeoncheon, South Korea, near the border with North Korea on April 9, as North Korea urged foreigners to evacuate the country. Picture: AP Source: AP

NORTH Korea urged all foreigners in South Korea to evacuate, saying the two countries are on the verge of nuclear war.

The new threat appeared to be an attempt to keep the region on tenterhooks over its intentions.

Analysts see a direct attack on Seoul as extremely unlikely, and there are no overt signs that North Korea's 1.2 million-man army is readying for war, let alone a nuclear one.

South Korea's military has reported missile movements on North Korea's east coast but nothing pointed toward South Korea.

Still, North Korea's earlier warning that it won't be able to guarantee the safety of foreign diplomats after April 10 has raised fears that it will conduct a missile or nuclear test today, resulting in US retaliation.

The United States and South Korea have raised their defence postures, and so has Japan, which deployed PAC-3 missile interceptors in key locations around Tokyo yesterday as a precaution against possible North Korean ballistic missile tests.

"The situation on the Korean Peninsula is inching close to a thermonuclear war due to the evermore undisguised hostile actions of the United States and the south Korean puppet warmongers and their moves for a war against" the North, said a statement by the North Korean Asia-Pacific Peace Committee, an organisation that deals with regional matters.

The statement is similar to past threats that analysts call an attempt to raise anxiety in foreign capitals. Observers say a torrent of North Korean prophecies of doom and efforts to raise war hysteria are partly to boost the image of young and relatively untested leader Kim Jong-un at home, and to show him as a decisive military leader.

Another reason could be to use threats of war to win Pyongyang-friendly policy changes in Seoul and Washington. Last week, North Korea told foreign diplomats in Pyongyang that it will not be able to guarantee their safety as of Wednesday. It is not clear what the significance of that date is.

Tourists continued to arrive in Pyongyang despite the war hysteria.

Australian Mark Fahey of Sydney said he was not concerned about a possible war.

"I knew that when I arrived here it would probably be very different to the way it was being reported in the media," he told The Associated Press at Pyongyang airport. He said his family trusts him to make the right judgment but "my colleagues at work think I am crazy."

Chu Kang Jin, a Pyongyang resident, said everything is calm in the city.

"Everyone, including me, is determined to turn out as one to fight for national reunification ... if the enemies spark a war," he said, in a typically nationalist rhetoric that most North Koreans use while speaking to the media.

In Seoul, South Korean Presidential spokeswoman Kim Haing told reporters that the North Korean warning amounted to "psychological warfare."

"We know that foreigners residing in South Korea as well as our nationals are unfazed," she said.

South Korean President Park Geun-hye, who has sought to re-engage North Korea with dialogue and aid since taking office in February, expressed exasperation with what she called the "endless vicious cycle" of Seoul answering Pyongyang's hostile behaviour with compromise, only to get more hostility.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Tuesday described the tensions as "very dangerous," and said that any small incident caused by miscalculation may "create an uncontrollable situation."

Also Tuesday, North Korea said it was suspending work at the Kaesong industrial park near its border, which is combines South Korean technology and know-how with North Korea's cheap labour. North Korea pulled out more than 50,000 workers from the complex, the only remaining product of economic cooperation between the two countries that started about a decade ago when relations were much warmer.

Other projects from previous eras of cooperation such as reunions of families separated by war and tours to a scenic North Korean mountain stopped in recent years.
 

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You're safe in South Korea, Aussies

South Korean army reservists salute during their Foundation Day ceremony at a gymnasium in Seoul, South Korea, where they denounced North Korea for its escalating threat for war. North Korea overnight loaded two missile launchers and warned foreign embassies to think about evacuating staffers. Picture: AP Source: AP

AUSTRALIANS are still being told travel to South Korea as per usual, despite North Korean missile threat tensions rising.

Meanwhile the Gillard Government has urged the small number of Australians bound for, or in, North Korea to reconsider their need to travel.

While DFAT's traveller advice for the North listed the threat at the "reconsider your need to travel'' level late Sunday, the adjacent South Korea, the target of angst from the North, was ranked as ``exercise normal safety precautions.''

Foreign Minister Bob Carr on Sunday played down the threat of war breaking out with a strike on US soil, saying another missile test was more likely.

He would not elaborate on plans for the South, where far more Australians were expected to be located compared to the North.

"For the South, our contingency plans do exist for a circumstance where there is combat but I don't want to discuss that, to elevate the prospect of that at the moment.'' Mr Carr said.

He also dismissed the latest warnings from North Korea for diplomats to leave as `"mischief-making,'' as the US delayed a ballistic missile test to avoid stoking tensions with the rogue state.

The Pentagon's disclosure that it would reschedule the intercontinental missile test due in California next week comes as the international community grows increasingly nervous that the situation could spiral out of control.

In China for a political forum, Prime Minister Julia Gillard was expected to raise the issue of security in the region when she met with Chinese President Xi Jinping late Sunday.

A US defence official said Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel postponed the Minuteman 3 test at Vandenberg Air Force Base until next month due to concerns it "might be misconstrued by some as suggesting that we were intending to exacerbate the current crisis with North Korea''.

"We wanted to avoid that misperception or manipulation,'' the US official told AFP.

"We are committed to testing our ICBMs to ensure a safe, secure, effective nuclear arsenal.''

South Korea and the US also postponed a major military meeting due to take place in Washington, an official said on Sunday.

General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, and his Seoul counterpart, General Jung Seung-jo, were to co-ordinate policy on the North and other issues during the annual Military Committee Meeting on April 16.

But the meeting between the two allies had been delayed at Seoul's request, a spokesman for Seoul's Joint Chiefs of Staff told AFP.

"The decision to delay the meeting has been made ... due to the current particular situation of our national defence,'' he said, without elaborating.
 

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N Korea bluster no match for tourists

South Koreans use binoculars to look at North Korea from Imjingak Pavilion near the border village of Panmunjom, near the DMZ. Picture: AP Source: AP

BUSLOADS of tourists still show up to gawk at the world's most heavily fortified border, even as governments on both sides threaten to reduce each other to rubble.

Chinese tourists browse through military garb - child-sized - in the gift shop.

Japanese teens in maroon school blazers flash peace signs and giggle high above a landscape of bright-blue water, drab, brown North Korean hills and seemingly deserted villages.

The Koreas' border can seem a surreal place at the best of times - part tourist trap, part war zone.

An amusement park, fast-food joints and kitschy souvenir shops mix with an ever-present Cold War tension that is higher now than it has been in years, following North Korean outrage over UN sanctions and joint US-South Korean military drills.

Pyongyang has threatened to reduce Seoul to a "sea of fire'' and stage pre-emptive nuclear attacks on Washington, while South Korea vows that if it is attacked, it will respond with even greater force. Visitors to the demilitarised zone yesterday viewed the clash with curiosity, fear, excitement - even a dash of romance.

"We were a little bit afraid that maybe they'd throw nukes across the border,'' Thomas Wolfley, a 32-year-old software engineer from Los Angeles, said, describing his initial feelings when he heard the North's threats.

A visitor looks inside through the military fence covered by ribbons and messages wishing for reunification of the two Koreas and national flags at the Imjingak Pavilion near the DMZ. Picture: AP

"It makes it more exciting. I'm confident that if anything were to happen the United States would come get me.''

The border allows visitors to experience a touch of danger - but not so much that it interferes with their shopping and picture-taking.

Hundreds of thousands of troops from both Koreas operate in fairly close proximity here, each side training lots of big weapons on its opponent's not-too-distant capital.

Seoul is only an hour's drive away, and the dense, chaotic, vibrant sprawl of that megacity can seem like another world as it gives way to farms, scrubby mountains, armed sentries watching for North Korean infiltrators and coiled wire separating the highway from the banks of the Han River.

The four-kilometre -wide DMZ is potentially a violent place, a point that's occasionally obscured by the tourists and DMZ-stamped T-shirts and hats.

Shooting still breaks out occasionally. A monument in the DMZ stands as a memorial to two American officers hacked to death with axes in 1976 by North Koreans during a fight that began as a dispute over US efforts to trim a tree.

South Korean army soldiers patrol along a barbed-wire fence near the border village of Panmunjom, which has separated the two Koreas since the Korean War. Picture: AP

Tourists line up for the chance to walk deep below ground into North Korean infiltration tunnels, many of them surprisingly well made, that have been discovered over the years.

The high point of many tourists' DMZ visits is a small group of huts in a place called Panmunjom, which straddles the border and is the place where troops from North and South come closest.

South Korea sends some of its tallest, toughest soldiers to Panmunjom. They stand statue-still, in fierce martial arts poses, chests stuck out, fists clenched, helmets and sunglasses reflecting the sun as they stare north. North Korean soldiers, smaller than their southern counterparts, glare through binoculars and gesture toward the south.

An attack at Panmunjom is unlikely, but a sudden North Korean strike in disputed waters in the Yellow Sea is certainly a possibility. Violence blamed on Pyongyang in 2010 killed 50 South Koreans.

Pyongyang's most recent threats follow UN sanctions imposed last week over its third nuclear test, which it conducted Feb. 12. North Korea says ongoing annual US-South Korean military drills are invasion rehearsals.

Among other declarations, North Korea has said it will no longer recognise the armistice that ended the 1953 Korean War, though it has made such remarks before. The UN says the armistice cannot be abandoned unilaterally. The most obvious product of that agreement - the DMZ - seems unchanged.

Experts dismiss the North's threat to launch nuclear missiles against the US, saying Pyongyang is years from developing the technology needed to pull that off. A direct attack on Seoul is also unlikely, as it would put the future of the ruling Kim dynasty at risk.

Recent threats are seen more as a way to rally support among North Korea's elite and military for leader Kim Jong-Un and to scare Seoul and Washington into agreeing to talks that would eventually provide North Korea with aid and security guarantees.

Some South Koreans worry about rising hostility, but many more ignore or shrug off North Korean threats they've lived with for decades. And at the DMZ, some even find beauty in the broad strip of no-man's-land between the countries.

Baek Jong-moon and his wife, You Ga-yong, celebrated their fifth wedding anniversary by driving up Saturday to take a look from an observation point at North Korea and the wild, mostly unspoiled, late winter scenery.

"It's so peaceful here,'' Mr Baek said. "I see no point worrying.''

Forces deployed on the Korean Peninsula.

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