FOR THE first time in seven years, a South Korean high-speed naval boat has fought a running battle with a North Korean patrol vessel after it crossed the loose sea border that divides the two Koreas, the Northern Limit Line.
The clash at one of the world’s great flashpoints highlights just how tense the relationship between the two Koreas remains despite warmer ties in the past few months, and how apparent closeness between the two bitter east Asian rivals can never be taken for granted.
The firefight near the disputed border off the peninsula’s west coast came eight days before US president Barack Obama is due to visit South Korea as part of an Asian tour.
The area was the scene of violent sea battles in 1999 and again in 2002, during the World Cup in South Korea, when two North Korean patrol boats crossed the Northern Limit Line and abruptly opened fired on a South Korean patrol boat, killing six South Korean sailors and wounding 19.
About 30 North Koreans were estimated to have been killed in the 20-minute firefight.
In a sign of how fraught the cross-border situation is, South Korea’s President Lee Myung-bak told the military to maintain calm, and asked it to ensure the incident did not escalate.
Just as the two Koreas are divided by a demilitarised zone running along the 38th Parallel, North and South Korea have yet to agree on their sea border more than 50 years after the end of their 1950-53 civil war, which concluded without the signing of a formal peace treaty.
The skirmish took place at a time of delicate negotiations aimed at convincing the North to dismantle its nuclear weapons programme in exchange for concessions on its status and for food and fuel aid.
While some South Korean officials played the incident down as an accident, the skirmish could also be read as a deliberate attempt by the North to create leverage in negotiations in the six-party disarmament talks on the communist regime’s nuclear programme, which are due to kick off again soon.
Tensions were heightened after a series of missile test launches and a nuclear test, but the North has been in more conciliatory mood since then and offered tentative olive branches to both South Korea and the United States.
Expectations are high that Pyongyang and Washington may soon engage in direct talks. The North has invited US special envoy Stephen Bosworth to Pyongyang for talks, and Washington was reportedly set to announce the trip soon, possibly this week.
No South Korean casualties were reported, but a North Korean patrol boat was severely damaged during the two-minute skirmish, according to South Korea’s joint chiefs of staff. The North Korean vessel retreated toward northern waters at 10.40am engulfed in flames.
The joint chiefs said a South Korean high-speed naval boat sent several warning signals but the North’s craft held its course.
The North Korean reaction was suitably vitriolic. It demanded that South Korea apologise for the clash, calling it a “grave armed provocation” by the South that targeted a patrol boat on routine duty. But the South Koreans insisted they had followed the rules of engagement.
“It wasn’t a close-range engagement. We fired some 50 rounds at the North’s speedboat,” a South Korean navy spokesman said. He said the North Korean boat had ignored repeated warnings when it crossed the Northern Limit Line at around 10.30am.
A report on South Korea’s YTN television quoted military sources as saying the North’s boat crossed the border while trying to stop illegal fishing by Chinese boats in the rich crab-fishing grounds.