Headline PH: Lee: NKorea must pay for torpedo attack on ship

SEOUL, South Korea – South Korea's president said Monday that the country will no longer tolerate North Korea's "brutality" and said the regime would pay for the surprise torpedo attack that killed 46 sailors.

President Lee Myung-bak said Seoul will take Pyongyang to the U.N. Security Council, suspend inter-Korean exchanges and ban North Korean ships from passing through its waters.

North Korea must be punished for its repeated provocations, Lee said in a solemn address to the nation from the War Memorial as he recounted the "incessant" pattern of attacks by communist North Korea, including the downing of an airliner in 1987 that killed 115 people.

"We have always tolerated North Korea's brutality, time and again. We did so because we have always had a genuine longing for peace on the Korean peninsula," Lee said.

"But now things are different. North Korea will pay a price corresponding to its provocative acts," he said. "I will continue to take stern measures to hold the North accountable."

A joint international civilian-military investigation team announced last week that their probe confirmed a North Korean torpedo sank the South Korean warship, the Cheonan, on March 26.

Fifty-eight sailors were rescued from the choppy Yellow Sea waters off the Koreas' maritime border, but 46 perished — the nation's worst military disaster since the 1950-53 Korean War.

By JEAN H. LEE,
Associated Press Writer

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