South Korea opens fire to stop North Korean warship from crossing maritime border

Hàn Quốc nổ súng ngăn tàu chiến Triều Tiên vượt ranh giới trên biển - 1 — A South Korean Navy warship during a live-fire exercise at sea (Photo: Business Insider).

According to Yonhap news agency, the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) confirmed on April 16 that a South Korean warship fired warning shots to prevent a North Korean patrol boat from crossing the Northern Limit Line (NLL), the conventional maritime boundary between Seoul and Pyongyang.

According to the JCS, a North Korean patrol boat crossed the NLL northeast of Baengyeong Island in the Yellow Sea at around 11 a.m. on April 15 local time. After issuing a warning signal that did not receive a response from the North Korean patrol boat, a South Korean warship fired 10 artillery shells into the sea. The North Korean patrol boat withdrew from the area shortly after.

Pyongyang has not yet commented on the above information.

Recently, the situation on the Korean peninsula has been extremely tense following tit-for-tat moves between Pyongyang and its two allies, the US and South Korea.

Following North Korea's missile tests, the US and South Korean militaries conducted many response exercises with the participation of many heavy weapons, including aircraft carriers and B-52 strategic bombers.

In response, North Korea accused the US and South Korea of holding military exercises that could become "a fuse for the situation on the Korean peninsula".

"The reckless military actions of the US and its allies against the Democratic People's Republic of Korea are pushing the situation on the peninsula to an irreversible disaster, the brink of a nuclear war," the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) stressed.

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