North and South Korea's navies clashed briefly in the Yellow Sea today, ahead of a visit to Japan this week by US president Barack Obama, in an incident that left a northern vessel damaged.
North Korea has a habit of increasing tension prior to major regional events and has been seeking direct talks with the Obama administration while riling global powers by last week saying it had produced more arms-grade plutonium.
The United States will announce in the next several days whether it will start direct talks with North Korea amid signs Pyongyang may be ready to return to broader nuclear disarmament negotiations, a US official said yesterday.
"North Korea is taking this aggressive stance to show they're not backing down on their security," said Yang Moo-jin, a professor at the South's University of North Korean Studies.
The North's posturing is often seen by analysts as a bargaining ploy to increase its leverage in negotiations.
The South's Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement that a North Korean patrol vessel went about 1.3 km into waters claimed by the South.
"We fired warning shots according to protocol and the North Korean patrol ship fired directly at our vessel," it said in a statement. The North Korean vessel than went back across the sea border and there were no reported casualties, it said.
A South Korean naval source told Yonhap news agency: "It is our initial assessment that the North Korean boat suffered considerable damage."
North Korea's military issued a statement blaming South Korea for the "grave armed provocation," saying its ships crossed into North Korean territory.
The North claimed that a group of South Korean warships opened fire but fled after the North's patrol boat dealt "a prompt retaliatory blow." The statement, carried on the official Korean Central News Agency, said the South should apologise.
South Korean president Lee Myung-bak, who convened an emergency security meeting, ordered his defence minister to strengthen military readiness.
The two Koreas have fought two deadly naval battles in the past decade in the Yellow Sea waters near the contested sea border called the Northern Limit Line.
The NLL was set unilaterally by US-led UN forces at the end of the 1950-53 Korean War, but the North has said it sees the border as invalid.
Reuters