South Korea wins U.S. support for trade action against North Korea

SEOUL (AP) - South Korea won U.S. support Monday for slashing trade to North Korea and vowed to haul its communist neighbor before the U.N. Security Council for a torpedo attack that sank a South Korean warship and killed 46 sailors.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said he expects the Security Council to take action against North Korea, calling the evidence that the North was responsible "overwhelming and deeply troubling."

The U.S. and South Korea are planning two major military exercises off the Korean Peninsula in a display of force intended "to deter future aggression" by North Korea, the White House said.

President Lee Myung-bak laid out the economic and diplomatic measures aimed at striking back at the impoverished North, including halting some trade and taking the regime before the Security Council.

International investigators concluded last week that a torpedo from a North Korean submarine tore apart the warship Cheonan on March 26 in the Yellow Sea off the west coast in one of South Korea's worst military disasters since the 1950-53 Korean War.

Lee said it was another example of "incessant" provocation by North Korea, including a 1983 attack in Myanmar on a South Korean presidential delegation that killed 21 people, and the bombing of an airliner in 1987 that claimed 115 lives.

"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 in a solemn speech at the War Memorial.

"But now things are different. North Korea will pay a price corresponding to its provocative acts," he said, calling it a "critical turning point" on the tense Korean peninsula, still technically in a state of war because the fighting ended in a truce, not a peace treaty.

The truce prohibits South Korea from waging a unilateral military attack, so Seoul sought to strike at Pyongyang's economy.