With the US military ready to respond to any nuclear or ICBM provocations from North Korea, I wonder if the Kim regime is setting conditions for justifying a provocation in the Yellow Sea instead with this recent announcement:
Image shows South Korean enforced maritime border in blue and North Korea’s claimed maritime border in red.
North Korea argued Saturday that South Korean navy warships have increasingly violated their disputed western sea border, heightening tension on the Korean Peninsula.
“The South Korean puppet navy warships’ intrusion into the territorial waters of the DPRK side in the West Sea of Korea has recently been on explosive increase,” the North’s state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said in an English-language report monitored in Seoul. DPRK stands for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, North Korea’s official name.
The KCNA argued that 101 navy warships infiltrated the inter-Korean maritime border on 81 occasions in April, which is almost twofold tallied in March. [Korea Herald]
The Kim regime has never agreed to the Northern Limit Line established after the Korean War in the Yellow Sea. They have a different definition of the border which means from their point of view the ROK ships are intruding in their territory.
North Korea may calculate that launching a provocation in the Yellow Sea may not trigger a US military response and at the same time allow the Kim regime to show power and save face despite the massive pressure the regime is facing.
