SEOUL, South Korea — President Lee Myung-bak accepted the resignation of Defense Minister Kim Tae-young on Thursday amid intense criticism over the South’s response to an artillery attack by North Korea two days earlier and the sinking of a warship in March, The New York Times reports.

“There was a need to revamp the military landscape,” a senior government official said Thursday night. “It was time.”

The government official said Mr. Kim offered his resignation on May 1, after a South Korean Navy vessel, the Cheonan, was sunk off the coast of North Korea in the Yellow Sea. Mr. Lee deferred the resignation and asked Mr. Kim to stay on. It was expected that his replacement would be named on Friday.

Earlier Thursday, the government said it would bolster its island defenses in the Yellow Sea and make its rules of engagement more muscular. Mr. Lee held a security meeting Thursday morning at the Blue House, the presidential compound in Seoul, where the new strategies were drafted.

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