North Korea has seized a South Korean fishing boat, towing it to one of its ports after the vessel inadvertently strayed into its territorial waters, a South Korean military official said.
The incident, probably the result of a broken navigational system, comes at a time of chilling relations between the two and an increasingly militant North that analysts say is in the midst of a sensitive process of resolving the leadership succession in Asia's only communist dynasty.
The South has asked its neighbour to allow the vessel and its crew of four to return, but officials said they have so far had no reply.
The boat appears to have strayed across the border on the east coast of the peninsula where it was intercepted by a North Korean patrol boat, the military official said.
Earlier news reports said the boat had been captured by a North Korean patrol, but an official with the South's Office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said the North's vessel never crossed the border into the South.
"It is not likely a case of a North Korean vessel venturing into the South and capturing the ship," he said.
The news gave a lift to South Korean defence company shares but otherwise financial markets largely ignored the latest potential rift in relations, with analysts saying investors were unlikely to be fazed by anything less than direct military confrontation.
"I don't think South Korea's country risk will be heightened further unless we see more drastic actions taken, such as a military clash," said Park Suk-hyun, market analyst at KTB Securities in Seoul.
Reuters