The sun goes down over houses destroyed by last week's North Korean shelling on the front line island of Yeonpyeong. North Korea has released a report defending its actions in the fatal shelling. -- PHOTO: AP
SEOUL - NORTH KOREA released a report on Thursday defending last month's deadly attack on a South Korean island, accusing Seoul and Washington of 'persistently escalating tension' in disputed seas off its west coast.
The North fired a barrage of artillery shells at Yeonpyeong, one of five South Korean islands straddling the contested Northern Limit Line (NLL) sea border, killing four people, including two civilians.
The shelling, the first of its kind against civilians on South Korean soil since the end of the 1950-53 war, coupled with the North's revelations of nuclear advances giving it a second path to make an atomic bomb, have spiked tensions on the peninsula.
Pyongyang said it had fired artillery at the island after South Korea had fired into its waters. Seoul said it had only been conducting regular military drills in the area at the time.
South Korea 'fired as many as thousands of shells into the territorial waters of the DPRK side', the state news agency quoted the Secretariat of the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea report as saying.
'This reckless act was obviously a deliberate provocation to prompt the DPRK to take a military counter-action,' it said. Pyongyang does not recognise the NLL, arguing that the demarcation was established without its consent after the 1950-1953 Korean war. -- REUTERS
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