Next Crisis: Korean Navies Trade Fire in First Incident in Seven Years - PeachParts Mercedes-Benz Forum

LUVMBDiesels · #1 11-10-2009, 06:20 AM

November 11, 2009
Korean Navies Trade Fire in First Incident in Seven Years

By CHOE SANG-HUN
SEOUL, South Korea — Warships from North and South Korea exchanged fire in disputed waters off the western coast of the Korean peninsula on Tuesday, leaving one North Korean vessel engulfed in flames, South Korean officials said.
The two Koreas accused each other of violating their territorial waters to provoke the two-minute skirmish. It was the first border fighting in seven years between the two countries, which remain technically at war.
The incident served a reminder of instability in the region just days before President Barack Obama is due to begin a weeklong visit to Asia. How to deal with North Korea’s nuclear weapons program will be a key topic when he meets with President Lee Myung-bak in Seoul next week and during bilateral talks American officials say they will begin soon with the North.
North Korea appeared to have intended the clash to highlight its long-standing argument: the 195-53 Korean War never officially ended and the United States must negotiate a peace treaty with it if it wants the North to give up its nuclear weapons program, according to analysts in Seoul.
“Our high-speed patrol boat repelled the North Korean patrol boat,” the South Korean Office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement following the skirmish. “We are fully prepared for further provocations from the North Korean military.”
South Korea said it suffered no casualties. Speaking in Parliament, Prime Minister Chung Un-chan said the North Korean boat limped back to its waters “enveloped in flames.”
Hours later, North Korea demanded an apology for a “grave armed provocation.” It did not say whether there were casualties among the crew.
According to South Korean officials, fighting erupted when a 215-ton North Korean vessel ventured across the so-called Northern Limit Line, a sea border unilaterally drawn by the United Nations at the end of the war. The demarcation line has never been accepted by North Korea, and there were deadly naval clashes in 1999 and 2002 in the disputed sea in moves seen variously as an attempt to grab American attention or as a bargaining ploy to win food aid from the South.
Two 130-ton South Korean navy boats issued five warning broadcasts, then fired warning shots when they were ignored, officials said.
“It was then that the North Korean patrol boat attacked our high-speed patrol boat,” Lee Ki-shik, a South Korean military spokesman, said. The North Korean vessel fired 50 rounds at a South Korean patrol boat about two miles away, causing light damage, the spokesman said.
The two South Korean vessels responded with 200 shots, officials said. Nine South Korean fishing boats were in the vicinity but were safely evacuated, they said. In North Korean waters nearby, several Chinese fishing boats were operating.
North Korea said its patrol boat was returning to its base after checking for an “unidentified intruder” in its territorial water when South Korean vessels gave chase and opened fire from behind. It had to respond with a counterattack, it said.
“The fleet of South Korean navy ships took to flight in a flurry,” the North Korean military said in a statement carried by the North’s state-run news agency, K.C.N.A.
The fighting took place near Daecheong-do, a South Korean-held island about 125 miles west of Seoul. The island is located just 18 miles off the North Korean coast.
President Lee called an emergency meeting of defense and other security-related Cabinet ministers and urged “calm and resolve,” according to a spokesman, Park Sun-kyu.
The disputed waters remain the most volatile section of the Korean border, with North Korea regularly sending warships into waters claimed by South Korea and warning that a skirmish there could trigger a full-blown war. It claims a maritime borderline far below the North Limit Line.
This year alone, North Korean navy ships had violated South Korean-held waters more than 20 times but invariably retreated when South Korea broadcast warnings.
Prime Minister Chung called the clash “accidental.”
But the fact that the North Korean boat ignored the warnings this time and opened fire first indicated that it was intended to dramatize military tensions ahead of Mr. Obama’s visit, said Yoo Ho-yeol, a North Korea expert at Korea University in Seoul.
“As Obama is making his trip to the region and South Korea moves to engage it too, North Korea is now stating its agenda in its own way,” said Mr. Yoo. “This is a low-intensity military maneuver to show that Korea remained a conflict zone and that the United States needed to talk to the North for a peace treaty. The best place to do that is the western sea.”
The North Korean military may have decided to stage a limited clash to express its discomfort with Pyongyang’s recent conciliatory gestures toward Washington and Seoul, analysts in Seoul said.
But Yang Moo-jin, an analyst at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul, believed that the skirmish was more accidental than intentional.
“It only involved one North Korean boat. The North’s statement today, by its standards, was very tame, not threatening any grave retaliation,” Mr. Yang said. “North Korea does not want to disrupt its conciliatory track.”
In the 1999 clash, two North Korean warships were sunk with an unknown number of casualties, and seven South Korean sailors were injured. In the fighting in 2002, one South Korean patrol boat was sunk and six South Korean sailors were killed.
After a long-range rocket launching in April and a second nuclear test in May, North Korea has recently begun reaching out to both Seoul and Washington. In September, for example, it allowed a new round of temporary reunions of Korean families who were separated by the war. The South responded by offering 10,000 tons of corn in humanitarian aid.
Washington has indicated that it would start bilateral talks with Pyongyang to persuade it to return to six-nation talks about ending its nuclear weapons program.

johnjzjz · #2 11-10-2009, 04:57 PM

somehow i dont think the south will apologize

In vietnam we had south Koreans ( ROC ) they were un real burtal did things my eyes did not believe to the VC -- jz