North Korea yesterday accused South Korean navy ships of violating the tense western sea border repeatedly in recent days, and warned that a naval clash could lead to war.
Hours after the warning from the North Korean Navy Command, a South Korean navy speedboat fired warning shots at a North Korean fishing boat that allegedly sailed 185m into South Korean waters.
The navy boat, which was 270m from the North Korean boat, fired eight machine-gun rounds, and there was no hostility from Northern navy ships in the area, said Kim Sung-ok, a spokesman at the South Korean military's Office of Joint Chiefs of Staff.
The North Korean fishing boat turned back in five minutes, Kim said.
South Korea's navy ships had also fired warning shots on Sunday when eight North Korean fishing boats allegedly entered the South's territorial waters.
Tension along the western sea border comes as the US is mustering international pressure on the North to abandon its suspected development of nuclear weapons. North Korea charges that the US plans to invade.
"Now that there is an increasing danger of a nuclear war on the Korean Peninsula, any military clash between the North and the South may lead to a war," a spokesman for the North Korean Navy Command told Pyongyang's official news agency KCNA.
The unidentified spokesman accused South Korea of deploying warships closer to the border off the peninsula's west coast and infiltrating warships into North's territorial waters "every day, escalating the tensions."
South Korea is "staging a prelude" to a sea skirmish to "provide the US imperialist warhawks, who are blustering that North Korea is next to Iraq, obsessed with war hysteria, with favorable conditions for a war," he said.
South Korea denies this. Instead it says North Korean fishing boats have violated the border in eight occasions since May 25, and that it is studying whether the provocations were part of a North Korean attempt to escalate tensions to gain leverage in talks with the US over its nuclear ambitions.
US President George W. Bush held separate summits with South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun and Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi in May and vowed to take "tougher measures" against North Korea if it escalates tension.
On Monday, G8 world leaders meeting in France accused North Korea of undermining non-proliferation agreements.
Korea's western sea border has been a site of deadly naval skirmishes in recent years, especially around June when the crab catching season peaks and fleets of North Korean and South Korean fishing boats crowd the rich waters.
In a clash in June last year, one South Korean warship sank, killing six of its sailors. The North said it suffered casualties, but didn't confirm how many. In a 1999 clash, South Korea said several sailors were wounded, and that up to 30 North Koreans died.
North Korea has never recognized a western sea boundary demarcated by the UN after the end of the 1950-53 Korean War. It claims a boundary farther south.
This year, the North has conducted missile tests and intercepted a US surveillance plane, maneuvers that were viewed as attempts to pressure the US into negotiations.
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