N. Korea rejects Yellow Sea border with S. Korea

SEOUL, Dec. 21 (Yonhap) -- North Korea on Monday accused South Korea of violating
its territory in the Yellow Sea and claimed again the inter-Korean border there
should be redrawn.
"The frequent maritime violations by South Korean military war-mongers in our
territorial waters have been recently expanding to dangerous artillery shooting,"
the North's Naval Command said in a statement carried by the Korean Central News
Agency.
The accusation came after North Korea claimed Friday that the South Korean army
committed an "unpardonable military act" by firing artillery in the western
maritime border region.
South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff has dismissed the North Korean claim, saying
the artillery training was part of routine drills conducted south of the Northern
Limit Line (NLL), the de-facto inter-Korean border in the Yellow Sea, which was
drawn by the U.S.-led United Nations Command at the end of the 1950-53 Korean
War.
North Korea has never acknowledged the western maritime border and kept demanding
the line be drawn further south. The Koreas exchanged brief gunfire in the region
just south of NLL in November, where naval skirmishes turned bloody in 1999 and
2002.
The North Korean naval command declared the so-called Maritime Military
Demarcation Line, which the North claims should be the western sea border south
of the NLL, as a "peace-time shooting zone" for its military.
hkim@yna.co.kr
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