My soul aches for Seoul

Let us keep South Korea in our prayers.  Many of us adoptive parents are concerned at the backlash that may come from these new developments in the news, especially with regards to traveling for our children.  But while the world may look chaotic, we know He who holds the world in His hands, and trust that His will be done.   Amen.


The NY Daily News

The U.S. played good cop-bad cop in the Korean crisis today as President Obama struggled to defuse tensions that boiled over into deadly artillery duels.
 
The nuclear aircraft carrier George Washington and its battle group of guided missile destroyers and frigates sailed from Japan to back up the South Korean navy in a show of force near the disputed maritime border between North and South Korea.
  
On the ground, Gen. Walter Sharp, commander of U.S. forces in South Korea and head of the United Nations Command, pressed for meetings with his North Korean military counterparts "to de-escalate the situation."
 
Sharp suggested an "exchange of information" in a sitdown at Panmunjom on the DMZ, the site of talks that led to an uneasy truce in the Korean War in 1953.
  
The U.S. has refused to renew diplomacy with North Korea and rejoin talks on an overall regional peace agreement until the North takes action on disarming its nuclear weapons.
  
South Korean officials said that death toll from the North’s artillery barrage aimed at Yeonpyeong Island rose to four today. The bodies of two men, believed to be in their 60s, were found at a destroyed construction site on the tiny island.
 
Two South Korean marines were killed and about 17 other people were wounded when about 50 North Korean artillery rounds hit the island on Tuesday, triggering a counter-battery South Korean artillery barrage of about 90 rounds.   [...more]