Naval ‘Provocation’ Riles N. Korea

North Korea accused South Korea of committing a “serious military provocation” by sending ships into its waters this week. Although South Korean officials denied any incursion, the incident Tuesday could cast a pall over the fledgling rapprochement between the two nations.

Through its state news agency, North Korea warned that its army was “highly alerted” and that “South Korean military authorities will be wholly responsible for the consequences to be entailed by the military provocations in the Yellow Sea.”

The rhetoric increases tensions between the two Koreas, which are technically still at war 47 years after hostilities ceased. There had been high hopes for eventual peace on the peninsula after a June summit at which the nations’ leaders agreed to take steps toward reunification.

A honeymoon period ensued, but in recent weeks, relations have grown more acrimonious. The North has twice postponed planned reunions of families separated by the Korean War 50 years ago. While the South has started working on an agreed-upon railway through the heavily mined demilitarized zone between the two countries, a recent meeting between North and South Korean defense ministers failed to yield a plan on how exactly the project would proceed.

Moreover, domestic political tensions in the South have been mounting amid charges that Seoul is giving too much aid and too many concessions to the North in return for too little.

Parliament was brought to a standstill Wednesday after an opposition lawmaker a day earlier branded the South Korean ruling party a subsidiary of the North’s ruling Korean Workers’ Party. The South’s Millennium Democratic Party demanded that lawmaker Kim Yong Kap be reprimanded, but leaders of both parties involved failed to agree on further action, thus delaying a bill allocating public funds to bail out ailing financial institutions.

The latest naval incident took place near the heavily fortified South Korean island of Paekryong, an area where a bloody naval shootout occurred in June 1999. Just after the summit, in contrast, the North returned a fishing boat in a goodwill gesture that calmed local residents’ nerves.

According to the North’s official Korean Central News Agency, four South Korean naval ships sailing among fishing boats intruded “deep into the territorial waters of the North” about 8:30 a.m. Tuesday.

As a North Korean patrol boat sailed to the waters, “the warships got ready for action after leaving the fishing boats behind,” the report said. “Three South Korean naval warships left Paekryong islet for the territorial waters of the North to join those warships, as if they had been waiting for the chance.”

“Scared by the prompt sailing of the [North’s] naval patrol boat, those warships fled southward in a flurry,” the agency said, noting that similar “intrusions” had occurred on three previous occasions this month.

“All these grave military provocations committed against the North cannot be construed otherwise than as deliberate and premeditated maneuvers of the South Korean military authorities to stop the situation from turning favorable,” the report said.

“The navy of the Korean People’s Army is highly alerted and keeps itself fully ready for action to cope with the situation,” it said.

The South’s Joint Chiefs of Staff office denied the allegations, according to South Korean wire reports, putting a different spin on the story: Three South Korean naval vessels had “moved swiftly to confront a North Korean patrol boat,” which was approaching the South’s territorial waters.

The confrontation lasted a couple of hours, with vessels from each side converging. But neither side crossed the navigational boundary known as the Northern Limit Line.

“We are trying to analyze the North’s intentions in making allegations that we have intruded on their waters, especially in consideration of reconciliation between the two,” a Joint Chiefs of Staff spokesman said, according to South Korea’s Yonhap news agency.