N.K. seizes S. Korean boat

A South Korean fishing boat carrying four crew members was seized and hauled to a North Korean port yesterday morning despite warnings from the South after drifting across the East Sea border, Seoul officials said yesterday.

"800 Yeonanho," the 29-ton South Korean boat, "was towed to the port of Jangjeon at 9:30 a.m.," Lee Bung-woo, the South`s Defense Ministry spokesperson, said in a briefing yesterday.

Lee said a crewmember on the boat reported a malfunction with the satellite navigation system via commercial link shortly before it was seized 11 kilometers into North Korean waters at 6:27 a.m.

South Korea called for the immediate return of all crew members and the vessel via a message wired to the North through the maritime communication line, one of the few remaining regular communication channels between the two Koreas.



North Korea simply said it was investigating the case of the fishing boat, according to the Unification Ministry.

The fishing boat had been floating in North Korean waters as early as 5:05 a.m., the Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a release.

The seizure comes as a South Korean worker remains detained in North Korea for four months over allegations that he defamed its ruling system and encouraged defection at a joint factory complex just north of the inter-Korean border.

The captured South Korean boat did not respond to initial requests by South Korean naval vessels trying to identify it, JCS spokesman Park Sung-woo said.

"The ship was off our radars when it crossed the Northern Limit Line, the de facto inter-Korean maritime border," he said.

"The boat was also tiny and built from reinforced plastic, which made it hard to identify the vessel with radar."

South Korean patrol boats moved closer to the NLL and warned North Korea twice to "reciprocate by releasing the fishing boat" after the seizure, he said.

The South Korean Navy said it sent back two stray North Korean fishing boats on June 30 and July 5, respectively.

"800 Yeonanho" is the third South Korean fishing boat to be seized by North Korean authorities since 2005.

The two previous boats, which had also strayed across the boundary, were released after five and 19 days, respectively, according to officials.

The 800 Yeonanho departed from the port of Geojin on the eastern coast at 1:30 p.m. on Wednesday and sailed past the NLL by as far as 20 miles (32 kilometers) off the port of Jejin, officials said.

Geojin is about 150 kilometers northeast of Seoul and 15 kilometers south of the Demilitarized Zone that divides the two Koreas.

Skippered by a man identified by his last name, Park, the boat, which was operating in the East Sea and mainly fishes for squid, was scheduled to return home Friday morning, Lee said.

The NLL was drawn in 1953 by an American commander of U.N. forces that fought on the South Korean side in the Korean War, which ended in a truce rather than a peace treaty.

Inter-Korean relations soured after President Lee Myung-bak took office early last year with a pledge to bolster pressure on Pyongyang to drop its nuclear weapons programs.

North Korea retaliated by suspending reconciliation talks and threatening armed conflict along their border. Tensions heightened further after the communist state conducted its second nuclear test in May and test-fired ballistic missiles off the east coast.

(sophie@heraldm.com)



By Kim So-hyun