North and South Korean ships exchange fire

[Tritio]

North and South Korean ships exchange fire

Reporting from Seoul - A North Korean naval ship suffered heavy damage Tuesday during an exchange of gunfire between the two Koreas along a disputed sea border off their western coasts, officials said.

There were no reports of casualties, but the North Korean vessel reportedly turned and headed for port after the clash.

The North Korean vessel crossed a demarcation line into southern waters about 10:30 a.m., prompting a South Korean warship to fire several warning shots, according to a news release from the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff.

"There are no casualties on our side. We are fully prepared for any further provocation from North Korea," the statement said.

A South Korean naval officer told Yonhap news service that heavy black smoke was seen on the horizon and that the northern vessel was heavily damaged.

"It wasn't a close-range battle. We fired heavily on the North Korean vessel," the officer said, declining to be identified because the information was preliminary.

"It is our initial assessment that the North Korean boat suffered considerable damage."

Navies from the two sides, which have technically remained at war since the cessation of hostilities in the 1950-53 civil war, have fought deadly sea battles in recent years.

In 2002, six South Korean soldiers died and several others were wounded in a similar exchange.

Tensions between the Koreas have risen since the South elected conservative President Lee Myung-bak, who has taken a hard-line stand on negotiations with Northern leader Kim Jong Il.

This year, the North has test-fired numerous short- and long-range missiles as well as an underground nuclear device, bringing condemnation from the United Nations.

In Tuesday's exchange, the North Korean vessel returned fire but missed, the South Korean report said.

Pyongyang's Korean Central News Agency on Tuesday blamed Seoul for what it called a "grave armed provocation perpetrated by the South Korean forces in the waters of the north side" of the demarcation line.

Citing an North Korean Army report, the news agency said the North had dispatched a patrol boat for a routine investigation of "an unidentified object that intruded into the waters of its side." The boat was soon fired upon by a group of South Korean warships, the report said.

"The patrol boat of the north side, which has been always combat-ready, lost no time to deal a prompt retaliatory blow at the provokers," the report said.

In the Yonhap report, however, the South Korean naval official said: "We are analyzing the motive for the North Korean boat's crossing. "We do not rule out the possibility that the clash may have been accidental."

One analyst said it was conceivable that North Korea intended to send a message ahead of President Obama's Asia visit, which begins Thursday.

"Given the fact that it did not move back despite warning calls, North Korea might have wanted to show Obama that the Korean peninsula is still unstable by provoking tensions," said Koh Yu-hwan, a North Korea expert at Dongguk University.

Thats the first incident of its kind in seven years.

[Tritio]

Corresponding report from The Associated Press.

Navies of 2 Koreas exchange fire

Navies of 2 Koreas exchange fire
By HYUNG-JIN KIM (AP) – 16 minutes ago

SEOUL, South Korea — The two Koreas briefly exchanged naval fire Tuesday along their disputed western sea border, with a North Korean ship suffering heavy damage before retreating, South Korean military officials said.

There were no South Korean casualties, the country's Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement, and it was not immediately clear if there were any casualties on the North Korean side. Each side blamed the other for violating the sea border.

"It's a regrettable incident," South Korean Commodore Lee Ki-sik told reporters in Seoul. "We are sternly protesting to North Korea and urging it to prevent the recurrence of similar incidents."

North Korea's military issued a statement blaming South Korea for the clash, saying its ships crossed into North Korean territory. North Korea demanded an apology, according to a statement carried on the official Korean Central News Agency.

South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, who convened an emergency security meeting, ordered his defense minister to strengthen military readiness.

The clash — the first of its in kind in seven years — occurred as U.S. officials said President Barack Obama has decided to send a special envoy to Pyongyang for rare direct talks on the communist country's nuclear weapons program. No date has been set but it would be the first one-on-one talks since Obama took office in January. Obama is due in Seoul next week.

South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement that a North Korean patrol boat crossed the disputed western sea border around 11:27 a.m. (0227 GMT), drawing warning shots from a South Korean navy vessel. The North Korean boat then opened fire and the South's ship returned fire before the North's vessel sailed back toward its waters, the statement said.

The clash occurred near the South-held island of Daecheong, about 120 nautical miles (220 kilometers) off the port city of Incheon, west of Seoul, the statement said.

The North Korean ship was seriously damaged in the skirmish, a Joint Chiefs of Staff officer said on condition of anonymity, citing department policy.

Lee, the commodore, said the shooting lasted for about two minutes and that the South Korean ship was lightly damaged.

South Korean military officials did not say whether they believed the crossing by the North Korean ship was deliberate. The two sides regularly accuse each other of straying into their respective territories.

South Korea's Yonhap news agency, however, quoted Prime Minister Chung Un-chan as telling lawmakers that the clash was not intentional. "Today's skirmish was accidental," he said, without elaborating.

The two sides have fought deadly skirmishes along the western sea border in 1999 and 2002.

No South Korean sailors were killed in 1999, but six south Korean sailors died in 2002, according to the South Korean navy. It said exact North Korean causalities remain unclear.

The two Koreas have yet to agree on their sea border more than 50 years after the end of their 1950-53 civil war, which ended in an armistice and not a permanent peace treaty. Instead, they rely on a line that the then-commander of U.N. forces, which fought for the South, drew unilaterally at the end of the conflict.

North Korea last month accused South Korean warships of broaching its territory in waters off the west coast and warned of a clash in the zone, which is a rich crab fishing area.

The latest conflict comes after North Korea has reached out to Seoul and Washington following months of tension over its nuclear and missile programs.

North Korea launched a long-range rocket in April and carried out its second underground nuclear test in May. But it subsequently released South Korean and U.S. detainees, agreed to resume joint projects with South Korea and offered direct talks with Washington.

Two administration officials said Monday in Washington that Obama has decided, after months of deliberation, has decided to send a special envoy to Pyongyang for direct talks on nuclear issues.

Obama will send envoy Stephen Bosworth, although no date for his trip has been set, the officials said. The officials discussed the matter on condition of anonymity because the decision has not been publicly announced.

There were no signs of unusual tensions along the heavily fortified land border separating the two Koreas. The Joint Chiefs of Staff said that were no worrisome troop movements on the North Korean side of the land border.

At Panmunjom in the Demilitarized Zone, an Associated Press photographer said the situation was calm. A group of Chinese tourists was visiting on the North Korean side.

The area is where officers from North Korea hold meetings with their counterparts from South Korea, the United States and other members of the United Nations command.

[Sarevok]

Why did not either side use anti ship missiles to deal a decisive blow instead of ineffectual gunfire ? Is there an unspoken rule about escalation since the situation is so tense all the time ?

[KlavoHunter]

Why did not either side use anti ship missiles to deal a decisive blow instead of ineffectual gunfire ? Is there an unspoken rule about escalation since the situation is so tense all the time ?

There are a number of classes of North Korean gunboat that are only gun-armed. It's possible that the same is true of the South Korean ship involved in this engagement.

[Sea Skimmer]

The patrol boats both sides use are mere motor gun boats often under 100 tons. Anti missile missiles are way beyond the armament they posses and using such things would be a enormous escalation. North Korea could make life very unpleasant along the DMZ short of all out war if it wished, and as it did for years in the 1960s. No one on the ROK side is going to escalate things further then they have to be. North Korea has been poking around this area of sea heavily over the last year or so, another incident was being fully expected which is probably why the ROK was quite happy enough to open up with gunfire at long range.

Missiles are also not actually a very reliable ways of sinking anything. They make holes for air to get in, not water. Often gunfire would be necessary to sink ships crippled by missile hits.

[CJvR]

Why did not either side use anti ship missiles to deal a decisive blow instead of ineffectual gunfire ?

Perhaps just because it is decisive. Putting a few extra portholes in a ship is worth a few harsh condemnations, blowing it to hell might provoke a more serious reaction.

[Tritio]

Here's an update:

Two Koreas' naval clash won't deter U.S. visit: Clinton

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - This week's naval clash between North and South Korea will not affect the decision to send a U.S. special envoy to North Korea, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Wednesday.
"This does not in any way affect the decision to send ambassador Bosworth. We think that this is an important step that stands on its own," Clinton told a news conference on the sidelines of an APEC meeting in Singapore.

The rival Koreas on Tuesday exchanged gunfire for the first time in seven years, damaging vessels on both sides and raising tension just before U.S. President Obama travels to Asia.

[Tritio]

And the obligatory North Korean sabre rattling.

North Korea Warns South After Naval Clash

SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea said Thursday that South Korea would pay a “dear price” for the naval clash on Tuesday that was the most serious between the countries in seven years, while South Korea sent additional warships near the site of the confrontation in a disputed sea border.

“We do not want confrontation or tension, but we will never tolerate the aggressors’ brazen violation of our sacred territorial waters,” North Korea’s state-run newspaper, Rodong Sinmun, said in a commentary carried by the official news agency, K.C.N.A.

“The warmongers who like to play with fire will surely pay a dear price,” it added.

The deployment by the South came as its defense minister, Kim Tae-young, told lawmakers that President Lee Myung-bak was concerned about the possibility of retaliation by North Korea. After the two-minute clash on Tuesday, a North Korean patrol boat was engulfed in flames and smoke, while a South Korean naval vessel was only lightly damaged, South Korean officials said.

Despite the growing tensions, the United States said earlier this week that President Obama had decided to accept a North Korean invitation to send an envoy to North Korea to try to resolve disputes over the country’s nuclear weapons program. Analysts here said that with Mr. Obama scheduled to visit the region later this week, the North Koreans might have intended to use the skirmish to strengthen their negotiating leverage.

The clash “does not in any way affect our decision” to send the American envoy, Stephen Bosworth, to North Korea, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said in Singapore on Wednesday. “We think it is an important step that stands on its own.”

Mr. Bosworth’s trip would represent the beginning of bilateral talks, a format that North Korea has coveted, and would be the Obama administration’s first direct dialogue with North Korea. Among Mr. Bosworth’s goals will be bringing the North Koreans back to six-nation nuclear disarmament talks, which the North quit earlier this year, American officials said.

South Korea sent additional naval ships near the disputed waters off the west coast of the Korean Peninsula on Wednesday to deter any North Korean provocations, said a South Korean official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss military operations with the news media.

He declined to discuss details of the deployment, but the Yonhap news agency, citing an unidentified military source, said that two additional warships and a destroyer had been sent.

South Korea has placed its 680,000-member military on heightened alert but has detected no unusual North Korean troop movements along the border, according to the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The clash on Tuesday erupted when South Korea sent patrol boats to the disputed sea border after detecting a North Korean patrol boat approaching waters that the South has controlled since the end of the Korean War in 1953. The North Korean boat ignored five warning broadcasts and sailed more than a mile into South Korean-controlled water. When the South Korean ships fired warning shots, the North Korean boat began attacking one of the South Korean ships, South Korean officials said.

North Korea contended that its boat was on a routine mission in its own waters when it came under fire from South Korean ships and repelled them.

North Korea said Thursday that the confrontation had represented a “deliberate and premeditated provocation” by the South Korean military to derail the planned talks between North Korea and the United States, as well as a budding “mood for reconciliation and cooperation” between the two Koreas.

There were no South Korean casualties. One North Korean officer was killed and three sailors were wounded, South Korean news media reported. The North, which did not say whether its forces had sustained any casualties, demanded an apology from South Korea.

The episode underscored the thorny relations between the Koreas since Mr. Lee took office in early 2008 and adopted a tough approach toward North Korea.

North Korea may have hoped that the clash would highlight its longstanding argument that the Korean War never officially ended, analysts in Seoul said.