North Korea fired missiles at a South Korean navy ship after the South sent warning shots soaring near a merchant vessel that had strayed into waters controlled by Seoul early Monday, Reuters reported. South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff initially spotted a merchant ship crossing the de facto maritime border, the Northern Limit Line, and fired warning shots at about 3:40 a.m., Reuters reported. Pyongyang subsequently claimed to have retaliated with 10 rocket artillery rounds, claiming that Seoul had actually intruded upon the sea boundary “on the pretext of tracking down an unidentified ship,” the North’s state media, Korean Central News Agency, reported, according to a Reuters translation.
“We ordered initial countermeasures to strongly expel the enemy warship,” KCNA reported a spokesperson for the General Staff of the North’s Korean People’s Army as saying, according to Reuters.
