South Korea Wednesday denied allegations that a pair of North Korean naval boats approached the western maritime border where the navies of the two countries exchanged gunfire a day earlier.
"There is no particular situation developing. The waves are high, also forcing fishing vessels to stay off the waters," Park Sung-woo, spokesman for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was quoted as telling reporters by Yonhap News Agency.
The allegations that two North Korean vessels closed in on the boundary early Wednesday morning had circulated in South Korea's financial and government circles.
On Tuesday, the navies of the two Koreas engaged for the first time in seven years near the border in the West Sea. The North Korean patrol boat retreated in flames while the South Korean side suffered no casualties, officials in Seoul said. It was the third such skirmish south of the Northern Limit Line after 1999 and 2002.
"There has been no sign of retaliatory moves by the North," Kim Sung-hwan, a South Korean presidential security aide, told Yonhap by telephone early Wednesday. South Korean President Lee Myung-bak had expressed concern over another possible attack by the North.
Won Tae-jae, South Korea's Defense Ministry spokesperson, said he could not confirm media reports that one North Korean sailor had been killed and three wounded in the battle that lasted two minutes.
"The reports carried material that cannot be confirmed," he said.
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