South Korea urges North to retract airliner threat

By Jack Kim

SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea told the North on Friday to immediately withdraw a threat it made against the South's commercial airliners, which has forced them to stop flying near the airspace of the reclusive communist state.

Singapore Airlines, the world's biggest by market value, said it was joining South Korean carriers in avoiding North Korean airspace as a precaution, although other regional carriers were not altering their flight paths.

North Korea, which is preparing to test its longest-range Taepodong-2 missile, said on Thursday it could not guarantee the safety of the South's commercial flights off the east coast of the peninsula, where the missile base is located.

North Korea linked its warning to joint U.S.-South Korean military drills, which start on Monday and have been held for years without major incident. The prickly North regularly criticizes them as a prelude to invasion and war.

The U.S. special envoy for North Korea, Stephen Bosworth, criticized Pyongyang for the aircraft threat.

"This is, we believe, very undesirable. It's provocation and it's unacceptable," Bosworth told reporters in Tokyo during a visit to the region for talks aimed at coaxing North Korea back to faltering nuclear disarmament negotiations.

South Korea's Unification Ministry spokesman Kim Ho-nyeon said the South's Korean Air and Asiana Airlines had been immediately notified of the threat. The airliners responded by diverting flights that approach the country from the east, he said.

Kim said about 33 daily flights approached the South from the east with about 15 of them by South Korean airliners.

"Threatening civilian airliners' normal operations under international aviation regulations is not only against the international rules but is an act against humanity," he said.

"The government urges the North to immediately withdraw the military threat against civilian airliners."

MISSILE LAUNCH

Singapore Airlines said it was avoiding North Korean airspace and using alternative routes, but added in an email to Reuters the move would not significantly affect flight times.

Japan Airlines, All Nippon Airways and Air China said they had no plans to alter their flight paths.

The area would likely be in the flight path of the missile, which spy satellites indicate is still in an assembly facility. It takes North Korea at least a week to prepare the missile for flight after setting it vertically and moving it to a launch pad, experts have said.

"We've become quite used to our northern neighbor's threats. Its overall impact on airlines is limited," said Suh Jin-hee, an analyst at SK Securities in Seoul.