NKorea steps up control over its fishing boats

SEOUL, September 20 (ITAR-TASS) - North Korea stepped up control over
its vessels, fishing close to the inter-Korean border in the Yellow Sea,
reported on Sunday a South Korean government source.
"North Korean patrol ships follow movements of fishing schooners in
the area of the so-called Northern Limit Line (NLL) and turn back
transgressors," the source noted.
The NLL had been drawn at the end of the 1950-1953 Korean War by the
command of the UN troops where Americans had prevailed at the time. The
line, the actual sea border between the two Koreas, has never been
recognised by Pyongyang that insists up to this time on its shifting to
the south. It was there that armed clashes between North and South Korean
warships took place in 1999 and 2002. They ended in losses on both sides
in manpower and materiel.
Several hundred North Korean ships are regularly fishing in that area,
and many of them often violate the borderline, since they are not fitted
out with advanced navigation equipment. North Korean patrol ships are now
located close to the NLL in such a way so as to control their vessels and
sometimes intrude south of the line one or two kilometres so as to return
their fishermen back.
These voluntary actions by the North Korean side, along with other
gestures of reconciliation from Pyongyang with respect to the US and South
Korea, are assessed by Seoul as a result of operation of international
sanctions, clamped down on North Korea after it detonated the second
nuclear device last May and launched ballistic missiles.
-0-bur/kud