Korean navies trade shots despite North’s delegation to Seoul

A South Korean naval vessel fired a warning salvo at a North Korean patrol boat today near their disputed Yellow Sea border, the site of many deadly clashes in the past, but tensions on the peninsula are easing after the surprise visit of a top delegation from Pyongyang this week.

“To force the vessel to retreat, our side issued warning messages and fired a warning shot. But the North Korean vessel fired back rather than backing down, which caused us to fire again. Then the ship made a retreat,” South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff told the Yonhap news agency.

The skirmish took place near the Northern Limit Line drawn by the US-led UN forces at the end of the 1950-53 Korean War - a sea border between the two Koreas that the North does not recognise.

In 2010, a South Korean naval ship was torpedoed in the area, killing 46 of the sailors on board. South Korea blames the North for the attack, but Pyongyang denies involvement.

That same year, the North bombed nearby Yeonpyeong island, killing four people, including two civilians.

The trip by vice-marshal Hwang Pyong-so and two other close aides of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un was the highest-level visit by North Korean officials to the South since 2009.

South Korea is awash with rumours, the latest being that Mr Kim, who has been out of the public eye for weeks, is suffering from gout after he failed to show up to welcome home his country’s athletes from the Asian Games.

Some rumours are even suggesting he may have been deposed, but the North Korean media merely say he has “discomfort” in his body and are running a lot of archived footage of him making factory visits and holding meetings.

Mr Kim's top security advisers and those of South Korean President Park Geun-hye have agreed to hold another round of high-level talks later this month or next.

Tensions are easing but the two sides are technically still at war after a truce ended the Korean War.

North Korea has declared 2015 the year of completing unification and is gearing up for all-out war by tactical training and boosting its attack capabilities, according to Seoul's defence ministry.

In South Korea, there is very little evidence of tension in day-to-day life in what is one of the world's richest countries, although there are low-level fears about the North's shaky economy and its nuclear ambitions. The country is heavily militarised and every male has to do two and a half years of military service. This week a public holiday saw many soldiers celebrating in the Haeundae beach area near South Korea's second city of Busan.

The South publishes regular updates on what it sees as the North’s military capabilities. The defence ministry said the North has added 300 multiple rocket launchers in the past two years to bring the total number to some 5,100. Equipped with 240mm calibre rockets, they are capable of reaching the Southern capital.

Since the start of this year, Pyongyang has fired test salvos of rockets 19 times, with the latest one in early September consisting of 111 projectiles.