North Korea Accuses South Korea of starting Sea Border Clash

30/06/2002| IslamWeb

HIGHLIGHTSNorth Accuses South of Planning Surprise Attack||North Demands Northern Limit Line (Western Sea Border) Be Demolished||Two Koreas Share the World's Most Heavily Armed Border|| STORY: The North Korean navy accused the South Korean military Sunday of creating "noisy false propaganda," and denied that its patrol boats provoked a deadly naval clash between the two Koreas, the North's state media reported.

The comments came a day after naval vessels of the two Koreas engaged in a 21-minute gun battle in the Yellow Sea, which sank a Southern patrol boat and killed at least four South Korean sailors. Nineteen South Korean sailors were wounded and one was missing.

South Korea's office of the Joint Chiefs of Staffs said the North Korean warship fired first and South Korean navy vessels returned fire. (Read photo caption)

North Korea, however, said a South Korean navy patrol boat crossed into its territorial waters and fired first.

The South Korean claim was "a bid to launch a noisy false propaganda" and "a premeditated sheer fabrication made to serve its sinister purpose of laying blame for the incident at our door," said an unidentified spokesman of the Navy Command of the People's Army of North Korea.

He told the North's official Korean Central News Agency that the South Korean military provoked the confrontation during the World Cup to chill inter-Korean reconciliation and impair North Korea's international image. KCNA was monitored in Seoul.

The spokesman claimed that the South has made numerous border violations, but that the Northern navy had exercised restraint to defuse the military tensions, "taking the ongoing world soccer championships into consideration."

"Nevertheless, the South Korean military sent more warships to those waters to mount a surprise attack on our side with two times as many warships as our naval patrol boats," KCNA quoted him as saying.

The spokesman reiterated North Korea's long-standing demand that the western sea border, called the Northern Limit Line, should be abolished.

The armistice that ended the 1950-53 Korean War did not demarcate a sea border between the two Koreas, raising sovereignty disputes over some waters.

Hoping to avoid possible armed conflicts, the U.N. Command imposed a sea border after the war but North Korea has never accepted the line.

Divided in 1945, the two Koreas share the world's most heavily armed border.

PHOTO CAPTION

South Korean Gen. Song Kiosk briefs journalists on a deadly naval clash between South Korea and North Korea during a news conference at Defense Ministry in Seoul Sunday, June 30, 2002. Four South Korean sailors were killed and one was missing after North Korean Navy patrol ship sunk a South Korean patrol boat near the western sea border Saturday in the most serious clash between the two sides in three years. (AP Photo/Yonhap, Lee Ok-hyun)
- Jun 30 6:46 AM ET