Visitors look at North Korea at the unification observation post near the demilitarized zone between the two Koreas in Paju
South Korea fired warning shots on Saturday at a North Korean patrol boat, as the reunions for families separated by the 1950-1953 Korean War continued, a sign of a thaw in inter-Korean relations.
The North Korean ship violated the northern limit line (NLL), which Pyongyang has never accepted as a sea boundary as it was drawn by U.S.-led forces after the Korean War ended, at about 3:30 p.m. local time on Saturday, Yonhap news agency reported yesterday citing military officials.
While clamping down on fishing boats, the DPRK military ship sailed south several hundred meters away from the NLL, according to the South Korean military authorities.
Seoul’s navy vessels fired five warning shots with a 40-mm machine gun at the North Korean boat, which returned back minutes after the firing.
There were no more clashes between the two sides, a military official was quoted as saying by Yonhap.
Spokesman of the North’s Committee for Peaceful Unification of Korea said yesterday that the South Korean military conducted provocations against the DPRK ship on a “normal mission” of maritime operations.
The spokesman’s remarks, carried by the North’s KCNA news agency, denounced the warning shots as “intentional provocative acts” to re-ignite tensions on the Korean peninsula with military clashes in the West Sea waters.
The maritime skirmish came amid ongoing family reunions, which were agreed to between the two Koreas in late August after top-level military talks to defuse tensions that had pushed the peninsula to the brink of armed conflict.
A total of 254 elderly South Koreans from 90 families on Saturday crossed the inter-Korean border by bus into the North’s scenic Diamond Mountain resort to meet their long-lost relatives from the other side of the border. Coming from the North to take part in the highly charged event were 188 people.
They were scheduled to meet each other in public in the evening before coming back to their respective homes today, according to Seoul’s unification ministry.
The first round of the humanitarian event ran for three days through Thursday at the mountain resort. XInhua
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