A North Korean fighter jet briefly crossed the western sea border with South Korea yesterday, but retreated without incident when two South Korean jets raced to the area, the South Korean Defense Ministry said.
The provocation, which also prompted the South to put an anti-aircraft missile unit into battle position, came only days after North Korea threatened to abandon the armistice keeping peace along the countries' tense border.
The incursion, the first by a North Korean military jet since 1983, increased jitters on the Korean Peninsula, where the North is locked in a dispute over its suspected nuclear weapons development.
"Our military sternly protests the North Korean provocation and demands that the North take actions to prevent a recurrence of similar incidents," a ministry spokesman, Brigadier General Hwang Young-soo, said in a statement.
Hwang warned that the North Korean incursion "could result in very serious consequences in the current situation on the Korean Peninsula."
Tension has built since October, when US officials said North Korea had admitted having a covert nuclear program. Washington and its allies suspended fuel shipments, and the North retaliated by expelling UN monitors, restarting frozen nuclear facilities and withdrawing from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
On Tuesday, North Korea threatened to abandon the armistice that ended the 1950 to 1953 Korean War if the US went ahead with sanctions or other actions against the communist country.
The North Korean MiG-19 jet fighter crossed the borderline at 10:03am yesterday and flew 13km into Southern airspace before heading back into communist territory two minutes later.
A South Korea anti-aircraft missile unit based near Incheon, a seaport west of Seoul, went into battle position. At the same time, two South Korean F-5E jets flew to the scene to try to intercept the intruder, the ministry said. Later, four more South Korean F-5E jets were deployed to the area.
The first South Korean jets were 30km, or a two-minute flight, from the enemy jet when it began retreating, said air force Colonel Oh Sung-dae.
The North does not recognize the so-called Northern Limit Line maritime border that was drawn up by the US-led UN Command at the end of the Korean War. North Korea has often provoked armed clashes along the zone in apparent attempts to raise tensions and bring South Korea and its US ally to the negotiating table.
Later in the day, North Korea's official state news agency, KCNA, described the situation on the divided Korean Peninsula and in northeast Asia as "so alarming that a nuclear war may break out any moment."
In June last year, warships of the two Koreas clashed near the western sea border. One South Korean warship sank, killing six sailors and wounding 18 others. North Korea admitted that it also suffered casualties but did not say how many.
In 1999, a series of North Korean incursions across the western sea border touched off the first naval clash between the sides since the war.
International consideration of North Korea's nuclear plans moved ahead yesterday, with China hinting the issue might be resolved with regional talks -- a statement that appeared to depart slightly from its weeks of insistence that the issue was a matter for only Pyongyang and Washington.
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