Reuters:

North and South Korea exchanged warning shots off the west coast on Monday, accusing each other of breaching their maritime borders amid heightened military tension.

The South’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said it broadcast warnings and fired warning shots to see off a North Korean merchant vessel that crossed the Northern Limit Line (NLL), the de facto sea boundary, at around 3:40 a.m. (1840 GMT Sunday).

The North’s military said it fired 10 rocket artillery rounds after a South Korean navy ship violated the sea border and fired warning shots “on the pretext of tracking down an unidentified ship,” according to state media.

“We ordered initial countermeasures to strongly expel the enemy warship,” a spokesperson for the General Staff of the North’s Korean People’s Army said, according to the official KCNA news agency.

Since the 1990s, Pyongyang has been disputing the NLL, drawn up at the end of the 1950-53 Korean War, claiming it should lie far to the south.

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