Acting President Han Duck-soo addresses a ceremony at a national cemetery in the central city of Daejeon on March 28, to mark the 10th anniversary of the commemoration day for 55 troops who died in three major clashes with North Korea in the West Sea, comprising an inter-Korean naval skirmish in 2002, North Korea's torpedo attack on the corvette Cheonan in 2010 and its shelling of the border island of Yeonpyeong in the same year. Since 2016, the government has designated the fourth Friday of March as the commemoration day, known as the West Sea Defense Day. [YONHAP] Acting President Han Duck-soo accused the North Korean regime of plotting "new forms of provocations" against the South while neglecting the plight of its citizens on Friday. Han made the remark in a speech marking the 10th West Sea Defense Day at the national cemetery in Daejeon during a ceremony honoring the 55 sailors and Marines killed while defending the western sea border with the North. "We firmly defended the West Sea through the noble sacrifices of our heroes, but even today, North Korea's most backward regime on Earth continues to threaten peace on the Korean Peninsula and in the world," he said. "While improving its weapons systems targeted at us through illegal arms trade with Russia, it is plotting new forms of provocations." Han sought to assure the nation that the government and the military are maintaining a full readiness posture to ensure that the public can live at ease. "The young soldiers who inherited the fighting spirit of the West Sea warriors will respond immediately and overwhelmingly to any North Korean provocation based on strong combat capabilities and a solid readiness posture," he said. "Moreover, they will firmly maintain the security posture by further strengthening the South Korea-U.S. alliance and solidarity with the international community so that [the North] does not dare challenge the Republic of Korea," he added, referring to the South by its formal name. Waters near the western maritime border have been a flashpoint between the two Koreas, where three bloody naval skirmishes took place in 1999, 2002 and 2009. The 2002 clash left six South Korean sailors killed. In March 2010, the North torpedoed a South Korean warship near the boundary, killing 46 sailors on board. Another service member died during rescue operations. In November of the same year, the North bombarded the South's border island of Yeonpyeong, killing two Marines and two civilians. Han said Pyongyang has continued to carry out threatening provocations by launching missiles and jamming GPS signals, in addition to defining inter-Korean relations as those between "two states hostile to each other" and fortifying its land. "The North Korean regime pursues only the succession of power, and focuses on its nuclear and missile development while neglecting the miserable lives of its people," he said. Yonhap