June 12, 1999
Web posted at: 12:58 a.m. EDT (0458 GMT)

In this story: North Korean boats pull back Protecting fishing fleet RELATED STORIES, SITES

SEOUL, South Korea (CNN) -- North Korea is warning South Korea that it may strike if South Korean vessels continue to cross into North Korean territorial waters.

The standoff, which has been largely peaceful with neither side opening fire, escalated on Friday when South Korean ships repeatedly rammed North Korean vessels, driving them back across the sea boundary.

"The South Korean authorities must know that if they continue reckless provocations despite our repeated warnings, they will meet with our strong self-defensive strikes. There is a limit to patience," said a North Korean statement from Panmunjom.

The two Koreas remain technically at war across the world's most militarized frontier after their 1950-53 conflict ended in an armed truce and not a peace agreement.

South Korea did not respond immediately to the North Korean threat.

"I don't see any need for comment on such a statement," the lieutenant-colonel, who declined to be named, told Reuters.

The U.N. Command, which oversees the uneasy truce, has requested general officer-level talks with the North Korean army to discuss the Yellow Sea incident.

"The U.N. Command views the North's intrusions into the waters south of the Northern Limit Line (NLL) as a provocative act, clearly, which has increased tensions in the area," said U.S. Army Col. Carl Kropf, U.N. Command spokesman.

"Accordingly, the North should cease sending naval vessels south of the NLL."

North Korea threatened on Saturday to carry out strikes in self-defense if South Korean forces did not halt "reckless provocations" in a standoff along their maritime boundary in the Yellow Sea.

Officials at South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff said North Korean boats had retreated by midnight (1500 GMT on Friday) and were now some six km north of the boundary dividing the bitter rivals' waters.

South Korea says Northern naval vessels have crossed into southern waters daily, apparently to protect a fleet of crab-catching vessels, before returning to the North in the evening.

The two countries have engaged in a tense drama off the western coast of the Korean Peninsula for the past week.

North Korea, which has largely avoided incendiary rhetoric so far, blasted South Korea in the statement issued by the spokesman for the Korean People's Army mission in Panmunjom and carried by the North's state-run Korean Central News Agency.

"It is an unshakeable will of the Korean revolutionary armed forces never to pardon those who violate even 0.001 mm of the sky, the land and the sea of the fatherland, in defense of their sovereignty," it said.

The statement said South Korea must be held wholly responsible for all consequences of the naval "provocations" which it said has rendered the situation in Korea extremely dangerous.

Analysts say North Korea appears desperate to protect the fishing fleet as it is now peak season for catching crabs, which are exported by the North, providing one of the impoverished state's few sources of hard cash.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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