Koreans Confront New Threat of War

(Nov. 24) -- With their divided peninsula on the brink of war, Koreans are facing a dangerous new reality brought on by this week's military clashes, with some who fled from the attack zone vowing never to return.

"I will not be going back," Kim Ji-kwon, 53, who evacuated from his farm on Yeonpyeong Island when artillery shells began exploding, told Reuters. "I've just left behind everything I owned."

Byun Jong-myoung, a former resident of the island, went to meet his sister-in-law who was being evacuated. "You can see North Korea from the island. You can't see South Korea," he told the news service. "But all these years, we never felt unsafe. ... We plan to tell [her family] that they should think about moving out of the island."

But farther away from the attack, in the South Korean capital of Seoul, some said they felt insulated from the violence, even though the city is just 110 miles from Pyongyang and within easy range of North Korean artillery.

"I was talking with a friend this morning, and we wondered why we weren't more concerned," Seoul restaurant owner Pyun Sung-ja told The New York Times. "I guess it's because the area of the shelling is so far from here. It feels like it happened in another country."

Yeonpyeong Island, which was battered by North Korean shelling Tuesday, lies in the Yellow Sea just two miles from the Koreas' disputed sea border. A sleepy fishing village about twice the size of New York's Central Park, and known more for a spicy crab delicacy than geopolitics, the island rarely registers on the radar of most South Korean civilians, especially those in cosmopolitan Seoul.

"We think the government will be more protective of us here, and it's safer than in any other part of the country," Pyun said.

As for North Koreans, it's difficult for Western media get access to people there and ask them what they think. But a group of Pyongyang residents boasted to one cameraman, saying the artillery barrage on Yeonpyeong showed off the North's military might.

"I think this time our military demonstrated to the whole world that it doesn't make empty talk," Ri Pong Suk told APTN.

Koreans also seem divided about how Seoul should respond to what South Korean and U.S. officials have called an unexpected provocation by the North. There have been several naval skirmishes near Yeonpyeong in recent years, including the sinking of the South Korean warship Cheonan, blamed on a North Korean torpedo. Pyongyang denies any involvement in the explosion, which killed 46 sailors. But Tuesday's attack was unique in that along with two South Korean marines, two civilians were killed.

That civilians were killed this time is something that South Korean Lee Cheon-gu said makes him angry. He told VOA News that he thinks the South Korean government was too lenient after the Cheonan's sinking and that Seoul hasn't acted strongly enough to prevent more attacks. But he said he hopes his government uses diplomatic channels, not military moves, to try to resolve the latest row.