By Jong-Heon Lee
UPI Correspondent
From the International Desk
Published 6/3/2003 4:34 AM
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SEOUL, South Korea, June 3 (UPI) -- North Korea Tuesday accused South Korean navy ships of intruding its territorial waters, warning the border violation would lead to a second war on the Korean peninsula.

The Navy Command of the North Korean People's Army said South Korean navy vessels' repeated encroachments were aimed at triggering a naval skirmish to provide a pretext for U.S. attack on North Korea.

The warning came at a time when military tensions were rising around contested inter-Korean sea border off the west coast of the divided peninsula that remains in a state of technical war since the 1950-53 Korean War ended without a peace treaty.

The North's warning coincided with South Korean navy's warning shots on a North Korean fishing boat Tuesday that crossed the sea border into the South's territorial waters.

A South Korean patrol boat fired eight shots from machine guns into the sky to force a North Korean vessel back into their territory, the Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement. The North Korean boat turned back in five minutes, it said.

The South's warning shot was the second this week. On Sunday, South Korea's navy fired warning shots as eight North Korean fishing vessels were staying in the South's territorial waters despite repeated warnings to retreat.

The warning shots came after a series of North Korean violations reported by the South Korean military of the Northern Limit Line, the maritime border drawn by the U.S.-led United Nations after the end of the Korean War.

Seoul's Joint Chiefs of Staff said North Korean boats have violated the sea border almost every day for the past 10 days, putting the South's navy on a heightened alert.

But North Korea insisted the reports of North Korean violation were "false" and South Korean naval vessels have intruded into the Northern waters repeatedly in recent days, "rattling the nerves of KPA soldiers."

The violations are aimed "staging a prelude" to a naval clash to "provide the U.S. imperialist war hawks, who are blustering that North Korea is next to Iraq, obsessed with war hysteria, with favorable conditions for a war," said a spokesman for the North Korean Navy Command.

"Now that there is an increasing danger of a nuclear war on the Korean peninsula, any military clash between the North and the South may lead to a war," the spokesman told the North's state-run Korean Central News Agency.

The two Koreas have long disputed the maritime border in the Yellow Sea. Tensions have risen sharply in the zone for May-June crab season, when North Korean fishing boats often moved into South Korean waters in search of blue crab beds that lie around the contested waters.

Last June, the two Cold War rivals engaged in deadly gun battles sparked by border violation of North Korean fishing boats, which left dozens of casualties on both sides. In June 1999, the two Koreas exchanged deadly gunfire in the disputed waters.

"These disturbing developments remind one of last year when the South Korean military authority dispatched warships to the waters under the North's control in an unbroken chain and sparked a naval conflict," said the North's navy spokesman.

"The South Korean military authority has already worked out a scenario for another 'West (Yellow) Sea skirmish' and is now staging a prelude to it," he said.

The NLL has served as a neutral zone to avoid possible armed clashes between the two Koreas over the past five decades.

But the North has said in recent years that it does not recognize the maritime border, insisting on its own sea border far south of the NLL, which was drawn "on the basis of the Korean armistice agreement and international law," according to an official description.