A North Korean patrol vessel is suspected of firing last weekend on a Chinese fishing boat plying the waters off the west coast of the Korean Peninsula, wounding the ship’s captain, the South Korean coast guard said yesterday.
The incident occurred on Saturday in disputed waters, Coast Guard spokesman Park Sung-kook said by telephone from the South Korean port city of Incheon. The captain was hospitalized, but his injuries were not life-threatening, he said.
China is a key ally of communist North Korea and is the impoverished country’s main donor of aid and goods. Still, North Korean patrol boats have fired on both Chinese and South Korean ships in the past, though the incidents rarely result in injury.
PHOTO: AFP
The two Koreas, still technically at war, have a long history of disputes over their shared waters. The coastal tensions escalated into bloody naval skirmishes in 1999 and 2002.
The incident comes as the two Koreas negotiate over when to hold military talks — their first official talks since South Korea’s new conservative, pro-US government took office seven months ago — amid heightened concerns over Pyongyang’s push to reassemble its nuclear program.
The captain of the Chinese boat was struck by shrapnel from a shell believed fired from the North Korean vessel, another South Korean Coast Guard official said yesterday.
“What’s clear is that we didn’t open fire,” the official said.
He asked not to be named, citing department policy.
A Chinese embassy official in Seoul said he had no immediate comment yesterday.
The number of Chinese boats illegally fishing in South Korean waters has risen in recent years because of pollution and overfishing off China’s coast, the coast guard said.
South Korea and China signed a fisheries treaty that took effect in 2001, but more than 2,600 Chinese boats have been captured for fishing illegally in Korean waters since then, coast guard officials said.
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