North and South Korea exchange warning shots along disputed sea boundary

Seoul, South Korea — North and South Korea exchanged warning shots Monday along their disputed western sea boundary — a scene of past bloodshed and naval battles — in a development that raises worry of possible clashes after North Korea's recent barrage of weapons tests. South Korea's navy broadcast warnings and fired warning shots to repel a North Korean merchant ship that violated the sea boundary at 3:42 a.m., the Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement.   North Korea's military said its coastal defense units responded by firing 10 rounds of artillery warning shots toward its territorial waters, where "naval enemy movement was detected." It accused a South Korean naval ship of intruding into North Korean waters on the pretext of cracking down on an unidentified ship.   There were no reports of fighting, but the sea boundary off the Korean Peninsula's west coast is a source of long-running animosities. The American-led U.N. command drew a boundary at the end of the 1950-53 Korean War, but North Korea insists upon a boundary that encroaches deeply into waters controlled by the South. Among the deadly events that have happened in the area are the North's shelling of a South Korean island and its alleged torpedoing of a South Korean navy ship, both in 2010. The two attacks killed 50 South Koreans.

Analyst Cheong Seong-Chang at the private Sejong Institute in South Korea said North Korea had likely intentionally plotted its ship incursion because it would be "unimaginable" for a North Korean merchant ship to cross the boundary that early in a day without the permission of the North's military.

Cheong said North Korea is increasingly emboldened by its recent missile tests in which North Korea said it simulated the use of tactical nuclear weapons to attack South Korean and U.S. targets. He noted Pyongyang would also know Washington's strained relationships with Russia and China make it more difficult for the U.S. to draw cooperation from the two regional powers on the North Korean issue.   "The South Korean military needs to make thorough preparations to prevent fresh skirmishes from happening on the West Sea and prevent them from causing the worst case scenario like the North Korean military's artillery bombardments" on a South Korean border island, Cheong said.