Category: North-South

… but when you pay a ransom, don’t you expect the hostage to be released? North Korea is an exception to every rule not written by Isaac Newton or Galileo, which is to say, every rule from which diplomats can’t grant exemptions: North Korea wants South Korea to reward it for resuming reunions of families separated by the Korean War, an official said Sunday after the communist nation hosted the first such meetings in two years. Hundreds of Korean families...

Scores of North Korean trawlers fishing for blue crab crossed the Northern Limit Line near Yeonpyeong Island in the West Sea for three consecutive days from Sunday to Tuesday. Military authorities are at a loss how to respond. A government source on Tuesday said between 20 and 50 North Korean fishing boats crossed the de-facto sea border in waters northwest of Yeonpyeong Island for three straight days since Sunday. “They returned north after fishing for three to four hours until...

Well, this would be strong evidence for the “water attack” theory: North Korea may have disabled alert systems that monitor water levels before it opened floodgates on Sept. 6, killing six South Korean campers, the Korea Economic Daily said, citing unidentified government officials. Four automatic alert systems near South Korea’s Imjin river weren’t working three hours before North Korea opened the floodgates to one of its dams, the Korean-language newspaper said. South Korea’s National Intelligence Service is investigating the matter,...

Historians, take note. South Korea has actually demanded an apology from North Korea for something: South Korea demanded an apology and further explanation from North Korea on Tuesday over a sudden discharge of dam water that left six people dead or missing, saying the North’s response was not satisfactory. Some 40 million tons of water from the North’s Hwanggang Dam pushed through the Imjin River, which flows out to South Korea’s west coast, at pre-dawn hours on Sunday, sweeping away...

Sounds like the boat, which carried a crew of four, strayed across the NLL when its GPS system malfunctioned: The fishing boat, skippered by a man only identified by his last name, Park, departed from the port of Geojin on the eastern coast at 1:30 p.m. on Wednesday and sailed past the Northern Limit Line (NLL), the de facto inter-Korean maritime border, as far as 20 miles off the port of Jejin, he said. Geojin is about 150km northeast of...