Chinese fishing ships are quitting a disputed sea border that divides the two Koreas as tension mounts on the peninsula following this week's nuclear test by the North, South Korean media reported on Friday, Reuters reported.
South Korea and the United States earlier raised the military alert level in the region as North Korea turns increasingly belligerent, following its nuclear test with missile launches and the threat of war.
In New York, the United States and Japan circulated a draft U.N. Security Council resolution to key council members that condemned Pyongyang's second nuclear test on Monday and called for strict enforcement of U.N. sanctions imposed on North Korea after its first atomic test in October 2006.
"Chinese fishing vessels have begun retreating from NLL (northern limit line) waters since yesterday. We are working to find out if this is based on North Korea's request," Yonhap news agency quoted an unnamed South Korean army source as saying.
The NLL marks the maritime border between the two Koreas.
Two deadly naval battles have been fought nearby in the past 10 years and the North has warned another could happen soon in what is one of the last major flashpoints from the Cold War.
The clashes in 1999 and 2002 were in June, the peak of the lucrative three-month-long crab season and when fishing fleets jockey for the best spots near the contested maritime border.
The clashes in 1999 and 2002 were in June, the peak of the three-month-long crab season when fishing fleets jockey for the best spots near the contested maritime border.
"Now that there's talk of ... an all-out war, we fishermen are worried," said a 48-year-old South Korean fisherman Kim Jae-sik in the island on Yeonpyeong. "Nowadays when we go out, we do know we are facing dangers."
The island lies off the west coast in the Yellow Sea, in waters claimed by the North but occupied by the South since the end of the 1950-53 Korean War.
The joint command for the 28,500 U.S. troops that support South Korea's 670,000 soldiers has raised its alert a notch to signify a serious threat from North Korea.
That is the highest threat level since the North's only other nuclear test in October 2006. It calls for stepped up surveillance but not an increase in military maneuvers.
The troops face a more than million-strong North Korean military, most of them massed near the heavily-fortified border.
Military experts say the North has enough artillery trained on South Korea's capital to cause massive destruction but that its army is generally poorly equipped.
They also say it does not have the ability to build a nuclear warhead, though the latest test does take it a step closer to being able to make an atom bomb.
While North Korea's increasingly angry provocations unnerve the international community, many analysts said a key aim is domestic -- raising leader Kim Jong-il's steely grip on power.
After a reported stroke last year, they say the 67-year-old may well feel a need to flourish his powers more extravagantly to help him prepare the ground for a successor -- possibly one of his sons -- to take over the world's first communist dynasty.
Some also point out that he has long used the threat of invasion from a hostile United States as justification fur spending the impoverished state's meager resources on a military that keeps him in power rather than on the rest of the population of 23 million which has slid into abject poverty under his rule since 1994.
And that, they say, means his government will not give up his goal of owning nuclear weapons.
"Simply put, the more North Korea resembles a third-rate South Korea on the economic front, the more the Kim Jong-il regime must justify its existence through a combination of radical nationalist rhetoric and victories on the military and nuclear front," Brian Myers, an expert on the North's state ideology at the South's Dongseo University, wrote in an article in the International Herald Tribune.
In a draft resolution, obtained by Reuters, the Security Council "condemns in the strongest terms" the North's test.
It calls for enforcement of sanctions imposed after the North's 2006 nuclear test, which included a limited trade and arms embargo but have been widely ignored. A vote Culd come as early as next week, diplomats said.
Western diplomats said Russia and China have agreed in principle to sanction North Korea, but it was not clear what kind of penalties they would support.
China, North Korea's dominant trading partner and the nearest it has to a major ally, is seen as reluctant to push so hard that it might trigger the collapse of its neighbor.
Additional measures that might be added to the resolution include a ban on importing and exporting all arms and not just heavy weapons, asset freezes and travel bans for North Korean officials, and placing more firms on a U.N. blacklist.
Washington is deeply concerned about North Korea spreading its nuclear technology abroad and the diplomats said cargo inspections were also possible.
It is urging China to pressure North Korea to step back from nuclear brinkmanship and return to stalled disarmament talks. But many Chinese analysts say Washington overstates Beijing's sway over Pyongyang and their government's willingness to use that influence.
...