By Ryu Jin
Staff Reporter

South Korea’s navy fired warning shots at a suspected North Korean patrol boat on Wednesday, even though it received the North’s radio messages that it was chasing a Chinese fishing boat, according to the Defense Ministry on Friday.

The ministry had initially claimed a South Korean navy ship fired two warning shots to repel a North Korean patrol boat as it had violated the western sea border after ignoring the South’s repeated warning messages.

``It is not true that North Korea didn’t respond to our calls,’’ Brig. Gen. Nam Dae-youn, ministry spokesman, told a press briefing. ``We found that the North’s navy had sent radio messages three times stating `the approaching ship is not our ship but a Chinese fishing boat.’’

Nam explained the military authorities first learned about the mistake after receiving a complaint from Pyongyang, Thursday evening.

President Roh Moo-hyun instructed Defense Minister Cho Young-kil to conduct a thorough investigation to get to the bottom of the case.

The joint investigation team consisting of nine officials from the Defense Ministry, National Intelligence Service (NIS) and other relevant government agencies, is expected to focus on where and why the report was falsified.

Nam said the Navy didn’t report to the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) about the North’s response at that time. Also important questions to be answered are who ordered the warning shots and whether he knew about the North’s message. It is still unclear whether the vessel was in fact a North Korean ship, or a Chinese fishing boat as they North claimed.

Military circles were left restless as President Roh, the supreme commander, gave a rare instruction to conduct a thorough probe. A ministry official, in particular, worried about the possibility that Chong Wa Dae might think the military made the false report on purpose.

In the military, experts said, there are a number of people who are not in favor of the recent development in inter-Korean relations and the changed mood between the two Koreas.

Last month, the militaries of the rival Koreas agreed in rare general-grade talks to take a set of measures to ease tension along their poorly marked western sea border, the site of two bloody naval skirmishes in 1999 and 2002.

As concrete ways to avoid such accidental clashes, the two sides agreed to have their navies share the same radio frequency, set up a telephone hotline and exchange information on illegal fishing activities by a third country, namely China.

On Wednesday, the JCS announced the ``North Korean patrol boat violated the Northern Limit Line (NLL),’’ reported as the first intrusion since the navies activated the hotline on June 15.

The JCS has explained that the patrol boat intruded just over a kilometer into southern waters along the disputed sea border at around 4:47 p.m. while chasing Chinese fishing boats. ``The North Korean vessel returned to its territory about 14 minutes later after a South Korean vessel fired two shots and issued several warnings,’’ it said.

Sources at Chong Wa Dae said a massive reshuffle of the military seems unavoidable given the presidential office’s accumulated dissatisfaction over scandalous events involving military officials.

``The Defense Ministry apologizes to the people for this incident. As soon as an investigation is over, we will make its results public,’’ spokesman Nam told reporters.

jinryu@koreatimes.co.kr