AFP
Seol, Feb 6: North Korea may fire short-range missiles across its disputed sea border with South Korea to bolster its sabre-rattling campaign against the Seoul government, media reports said on Friday.
Seoul officials believe this is the likeliest form of provocation from the communist state, according to the Chosun Ilbo newspaper and Yonhap news agency.
The North, which is fiercely hostile to Seoul's conservative government, announced last week it has scrapped all peace agreements with the South including one covering the Yellow Sea borderline. Its official media has repeatedly warned of a possible armed clash.
Pyongyang is also apparently preparing for a separate long-range missile test-launch, according to US and South Korean officials this week. Washington has said any such launch would be "provocative."
Chosun said Seoul security officials at a meeting on January 30 -- the day the North scrapped its pacts -- concluded that a missile launch over the Northern Limit Line was the likeliest provocation.
The North refuses to recognize the NLL, which was drawn unilaterally by United Nations forces after the 1950-53 war. The area was the scene of bloody naval clashes in 1999 and 2002.
"Pyongyang may use the logic that South Korean leaflets being sent to the North is on par with North Korea firing missiles at the South," Chosun quoted an unidentified official as saying.
Rights activists periodically use balloons to launch leaflets across the border fiercely criticizing the North's regime.
They plan another launch to mark leader Kim Jong-Il's birthday on February 16, and Chosun said the North could retaliate with some kind of military action.
The North used its west coast naval base on Chodo island to test-fire missiles into its own waters last October. The sea border is in range of Chodo.
Chosun quoted an unidentified intelligence officer as saying the North may not provoke a naval skirmish because the South's navy is better-armed.
Yonhap said the apparent preparations for a long-range missile launch -- in full view of satellite TV cameras -- could be aimed at distracting attention from planned launches across the sea border.
"We are intensifying our monitoring of the west coast because we believe that is where North Korea could fire short-range missiles in a surprise move," a defence official told the agency on condition of anonymity.
"Missiles could be launched near the NLL because that is the area North Korea wants to make a statement on," Paik Hak-Soon, of the Sejong Institute think-tank, told Yonhap.
Relations soured last spring after President Lee Myung-Bak took office in Seoul and rolled back the "sunshine" engagement policy of his liberal predecessors.
Lee linked major economic aid to denuclearization and said he would review summit pacts signed by the North and his predecessors -- a stance that enrages Pyongyang.