SEOUL, South Korea A South Korean Navy patrol ship sank near the disputed western maritime border with North Korea early Saturday after suffering damage to its hull, South Korea
military said. 
The sinking immediately raised suspicions about the possible involvement
of North Korea, whose navy has skirmished with South Korean ships in
the waters off the Korean Peninsula. But South Korean officials said it
was not clear whether the ship had been attacked by the North.
South Korea’s president, Lee Myung-bak, ordered an emergency meeting of
security-related cabinet ministers at an underground bunker at his
office, the Blue House, in Seoul, and he ordered the military to focus
on rescue efforts, according to South Korean news reports.
“It is premature at this stage to discuss the cause of the sinking,”
said a presidential spokeswoman, Kim Eun-hye. “It has not been
determined whether this incident is related to North Korea.”
By early Saturday morning, 58 of the ship’s 104 crew members had been
rescued, Commodore Lee Ki-shik of the South Korean Navy said during a
news briefing. More navy ships were headed to the scene to assist in the
rescue efforts.
The commodore did confirm reports in the South Korean news media that
another South Korean ship had fired warning shots around the time the
first ship was damaged after detecting an unidentified object on its
radar. He cautioned that the object could have been a flock of birds.
“All we can say for now is that one of our patrol ships is sinking after
it suffered a rupture in its bottom created by an unidentified cause,”
said a spokesman at the South Korean Office of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff. He spoke on the condition of anonymity because South Korea had
not made a formal announcement.
The ship was in the Yellow Sea near Baengnyeong, a South Korean island
eight miles from the North Korean coast and 120 miles from the South
Korean mainland.
The waters in the disputed western sea near the two Koreas make up the
most volatile section of the border between North and South Korea and
were the site of naval clashes in 1999 and 2002.
North Korea rejects a maritime border unilaterally drawn by the United
Nations at the end of the 1950-53 Korean War and defended by the South
Koreans.
In November, naval patrol boats from the North and South exchanged fire
after a North Korean boat crossed that sea border, called the
northern-limit line.
Post a Comment