DPRK warns S. Korea against intrusion into its territory

PYONGYANG, North Korea (Xinhua) — The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) on Sunday warned South Korea against entering the DPRK's territorial waters when searching for the missing body of a South Korean civilian.

"We don't care whether the south side conducts any kind of search operation in its territorial waters or not. But we can never overlook any intrusion into our territorial waters and we seriously warn the south side against it," the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported.

The South Korean military said on Thursday that a fisheries official was shot dead by DPRK soldiers near the inter-Korean maritime border. According to the South Korean government, Pyongyang sent a notice to the Blue House Friday to explain the deadly shooting.

In regards to the shooting incident, the KCNA said Pyongyang has investigated the "awful case which should not have happened in the present phase of the interKorean relations," and notified the South Korean side about its details on Friday.

"We also took more necessary security measures in order to make sure that no more incident spoiling the relations of trust and respect between the north and the south would happen in any case," the KCNA added.

The KCNA quoted a report by the country's navy as saying that South Korea has "mobilized many vessels, including warships, to an action presumed to be a search operation and let them intrude" into the DPRK's territorial waters since Friday.

The DPRK urged South Korea to "immediately halt the intrusion."

Pyongyang also said it was about to organize a search operation and considered the procedures of "handing over any tide-brought corpse to the south side conventionally" in case they found it during the operation.