North and South Korea yesterday exchanged warning shots along their disputed western sea boundary, raising concern of possible clashes after North Korea’s recent barrage of weapons tests.
The South’s navy broadcast warnings and fired warning shots to repel a North Korean merchant ship that breached the sea boundary at 3:42am, the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement.
North Korea’s military said its coastal defense units responded by firing 10 rounds of artillery warning shots toward its territorial waters, where “naval enemy movement was detected.”
Photo: EPA-EFE
It said that a South Korean naval ship intruded into North Korean waters on the pretext of cracking down on an unidentified ship.
There were no reports of fighting, but the sea boundary off the Korean Peninsula’s west coast is a source of long-running animosities. The US-led UN Command drew a boundary at the end of the 1950-1953 Korean War, but North Korea insists upon a boundary that encroaches deeply into waters controlled by the South.
Among the deadly events that have happened in the area are the North’s shelling of a South Korean island and its alleged torpedoing of a South Korean navy ship, both in 2010. The two attacks killed 50 South Koreans.
Cheong Seong-chang, an analyst at the Sejong Institute in South Korea, said its was likely that North Korea had intentionally plotted its ship incursion, because it would be “unimaginable” for a North Korean merchant ship to cross the boundary that early in a day without the permission of the North’s military.
North Korea is increasingly emboldened by its recent missile tests, Cheong said.
Pyongyang would also know that Washington’s strained relationships with Russia and China make it more difficult for the US cooperate with the two regional powers on the North Korean issue, he said.
“The South Korean military needs to make thorough preparations to prevent fresh skirmishes from happening on the West Sea and prevent them from causing the worst case scenario like the North Korean military’s artillery bombardments” on a South Korean border island, Cheong said.
The South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff said the North’s artillery firings yesterday breached a 2018 inter-Korean accord on reducing military animosity and undermined stability on the Korean Peninsula.
It said the North Korean shells did not land in the South’s waters, but South Korea is boosting its military readiness.
The General Staff of the North’s Korean People’s Army said in a statement that South Korea provoked animosity near their land border with its own artillery tests and propaganda loudspeaker broadcasts.
Seoul has confirmed that it fired artillery last week as part of its regular military exercises, but denied that it resumed the loudspeaker broadcasts that both Koreas halted under a 2018 agreement.
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