South Korea Wednesday honoured 40 officers with medals and citations for driving back a North Korean patrol boat during a naval clash last month. Eleven officers including Lieutenant Kim Sang-Hun were awarded medals while 29 others received certificates of commendation at a ceremony attended by top military officials, the defence ministry said.
Kim, 27, won the Chungmugong Medal, one of South Korea's highest military awards, for his exploits in the brief but fierce gunbattle on November 10 on the tense Yellow Sea border. Kim was in command of a 170-ton high-speed patrol boat when - according to Seoul's accounts - the North Korean boat crossed the sea border in defiance of warnings and opened fire.
The clash left the North Korean boat in flames as it retreated across the border. It was the third in just over a decade near the Yellow Sea border, which North Korea refuses to recognise. In a 1999 skirmish, a North Korean boat with an estimated 20 sailors aboard was sunk while the South suffered no deaths.