The Navy chief said Thursday South Korea will safeguard its western sea border with North Korea at all costs, saying it is clearly a borderline a number of lives have been lost to defend.
Admiral Choi Yoon-hee made the remark as rival parties continued to lock horns over allegations that former President Roh Moo-hyun promised during his 2007 summit with then North Korean leader Kim Jong-il that Seoul would not insist on the boundary that Pyongyang does not recognize.
The allegations, raised by a ruling party lawmaker earlier this month, are believed to be targeted at the opposition Democratic United Party presidential candidate, Moon Jae-in, who served as chief of staff to Roh.
North Korea has never recognized the maritime boundary, known as the Northern Limit Line (NLL), which was drawn unilaterally by the U.S.-led United Nations Command when the 1950-53 Korean War ended, and demands that the line be drawn further south.
Areas near the border have been the scene of a number of bloody inter-Korean clashes. The two sides fought naval gun-battles in the area in 1999, 2002 and 2009. In 2010, the North torpedoed a South Korean warship in the area and shelled a Korean border island.
Choi said the recent controversy over the NLL is not appropriate when thinking of the 46 soldiers who were killed when North Korea torpedoed and sank the South Korean Navy warship Cheonan.
"NLL is a South Korean territory (line) that has been safeguarded with deaths," Choi said during the parliamentary meeting held at the Navy headquarters in Daejeon, about 164 kilometers south of Seoul. "The NLL cannot be a subject of negotiations in any case."
Noting that the North violated the NLL on 577 occasions since 1973 until recently, Choi said the communist state ignores the maritime border because it considers the NLL "a line that squeezes its maritime activities" and a "knife on its side" from a military perspective.
"North Korea raises (issues surrounding the NLL) to create political conflict in the South," the four-star general said, adding the military would stay vigilant to guard against possible provocations near the maritime border.
Tensions around the sea border escalated in recent months as North Korean fishing boats made a series of incursions across it, with the South's Navy firing a barrage of warning shots last month to chase North Korean boats away. (Yonhap)