South Korea’s military fired warning shots after a North Korean vessel crossed the de facto maritime border in the Yellow Sea Friday morning, Seoul’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said. In this 2021 image, a South Korean military observation post in Gimpo looks toward nearby North Korea. File Photo by Thomas Maresca/UPI | License Photo
South Korea’s military fired warning shots after a North Korean merchant vessel crossed the de facto maritime border in the Yellow Sea early Friday morning, Seoul’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said.
“At approximately 5:00 a.m. today, a North Korean merchant vessel violated the Northern Limit Line in the area northwest of Baengnyeong Island,” the JCS said in a text message sent to reporters.
“Our military broadcast a warning and fired warning shots,” the JCS said. “The vessel subsequently left our jurisdictional waters.”
The South’s military remains in a heightened state of readiness, the JCS added.
North Korea does not officially recognize the Northern Limit Line, or NLL, which was drawn unilaterally by the U.S.-led United Nations Command after the Korean War. The boundary area has been the location for a handful of naval skirmishes in the decades after the 1950-53 war, including the North’s 2010 torpedo attack on a South Korean warship that left 46 dead.
In January 2024, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un called the line “illegal” and warned that even the slightest violation of the North’s territory would be considered a “war provocation.”
Kim later repeated the threats, saying the boundary was a “ghost … without any ground in the light of international law or legal justification.”
He stressed the need for North Korea to “thoroughly defend the maritime sovereignty by force of arms and actions, not by any rhetoric, statement and public notice.”
The two Koreas exchanged warning shots near the NLL in October 2022, after Seoul accused a North Korean vessel of intruding into its territorial waters in the Yellow Sea.
South Korean President Lee Jae Myung has attempted to reduce inter-Korean tensions since he took office in June, with conciliatory gestures such as removing propaganda loudspeakers from border areas.
On Tuesday, Lee outlined a peace initiative built around exchange, normalization and denuclearization — or “END” — during his address at the U.N. General Assembly.
Pyongyang has consistently rebuffed any efforts at engagement by Seoul. Kim Jong Un recently appeared to open the door to renewed diplomacy with Washington, however, saying earlier this week that he has “fond memories” of U.S. President Donald Trump.
