A North Korean patrol boat strayed into South Korean waters on the West Sea on Tuesday, a day before the presidential election here.
It was the first time the North Korean military has breached the Northern Limit Line, the de facto maritime border which Pyongyang does not officially recognize, since an inter-Korean military agreement from September 2018.
A spokesman for the Joint Chief of Staff here told reporters the Navy spotted a 10 m-long North Korean steel boat of unidentified use in waters about 10 km east of Baeknyeong Island around 9:30 a.m. Tuesday. While the Navy towed it away, a North Korean patrol boat in pursuit of the steel boat crossed the NLL.
The Navy fired three rounds of warning shots from a speedboat before the North Korean patrol boat turned back about 1 km south of the NLL seven minutes later, the spokesman added.
Asked if the JCS had any plan to protest to the North, the spokesman merely said, "We broadcast a warning message, fired warning shots and sent two messages to the North" via a cross-border hotline.
