Mystery Ship Crosses Over to the North

UPDATE: Looks like I was wrong. It appears to be the act of a lone drunk who opted for the Workers’ Paradise. That’s going to be some hangover.

ORIGINAL POST: The Chosun Ilbo calls it a defection, but without knowing more than what’s in the article, I’d say a more likely theory is that some North Korean infiltrators were on their way home.

South Korean coastal border guards fired some 20 warning shots from a 60 mm mortar, 106 mm recoilless rifle and MG50 machine gun, but were unable to stop the ship crossing the NLL.

This piece by Andrei Lankov is must-read background material (the man’s timing is pretty extraordinary, no?). Not that the current South Korean regime would dare to admit such a possibility. Can we expect to see reprimands for those who authorized the warning shots, since that guaranteed that the press would eventually find out?

Whose hostile policy, Minister Chung?

UPDATE: CNN reports that the vessel appears to have been a South Korean fishing boat.