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North Korea disputes South Korea’s artillery claim

11 August 2011 02:56 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. North Korea on Thursday called South Korea’s claim of an artillery exchange between the rivals "preposterous," saying a frightened South mistook construction noise for artillery when it accused Pyongyang of opening fire near the rivals’ disputed maritime line, APA reports siting Associated Press.

North Korea said in a statement that the South overreacted to "normal blasting" from a North Korean construction project "aimed at improving the standard of people’s living." South Korean defense officials say marines returned fire Wednesday after North Korea launched artillery shells into the same waters that saw a deadly artillery exchange between the countries last November.

"It was preposterous in the age of science when latest detecting and intelligence means are available that they mistook the blasting for shelling," an unnamed North Korean official said in a statement released by the official Korean Central News Agency. "It was a tragicomedy that they indiscriminately reacted to what happened with counter-shelling even without confirming the truth about the case in the sensitive waters."

South Korean Defense Ministry spokesman Kim Min-seok said three North Korean shells originally fired near the Northern Limit Line in the Yellow Sea prompted the South to fire three shells back. Another ministry official, who refused to be named because of office policy, said North Korea fired more rounds later in the day and South Korea responded.

All the shells landed in the water, South Korea said, and there were no reports of casualties.

South Korean forces have been on high alert in the area since a North Korean artillery attack killed four people in November on South Korea’s Yeonpyeong island. Wednesday’s artillery exchange, which happened in hazy weather, was near that island, South Korea said.

It follows a recent easing of animosity between the Koreas and comes ahead of joint U.S.-South Korean military drills set for next week. Last month, a senior North Korean diplomat met with U.S. officials in New York to negotiate ways to restart long-stalled international talks aimed at persuading the North to abandon its nuclear weapons aspirations. The meeting came after the Koreas’ nuclear envoys held cordial talks during a regional security forum in Indonesia.

In its statement Thursday, the North repeated its call for the cancellation of U.S.-South Korean military drills and said South Korea was deliberately trying to ruin "the atmosphere of dialogue in the Korean peninsula and its vicinity and push the inter-Korean relations to the worst phase of confrontation and clash."

On Wednesday, the United States appeared keen to get beyond the firing incident. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland urged North Korea to exercise restraint and take steps to allow the six-nation disarmament talks to resume.

"This incident is now over, and we now need to move back to the main business at hand," Nuland told reporters in Washington.

The South Korean official who spoke on condition of anonymity said South Korean forces stepped up their monitoring of the North after Wednesday’s artillery exchange. South Korean marines on Yeonpyeong returned fire after North Korea fired from one of its front-line islands, the official said.

The North’s shelling took place unexpectedly, the official said, and neither side was conducting firing drills at the time. The South Korean military has yet to determine the motive behind the North’s shelling, the official said.

Violence often erupts in the contested slice of sea. Boats routinely jostle for position during crab-catching season, and three deadly naval clashes since 1999 have taken a few dozen lives.