North Korea warned on Monday of unpredictable disaster unless the South and the United States stop allowing tours inside a heavily armed border buffer that is one of the most visited spots on the peninsula. The warning comes as tensions were raised after a South Korean navy ship sank on Friday.
Early reports that the North may have been involved spooked markets but Seoul later said it was almost certain Pyongyang had played no part. A South Korean Defence Ministry official said divers were searching for survivors but were hampered by murky water at the scene near a disputed sea border with the North. Divers tapped on the tail of the capsized hull where most of the missing were presumed trapped but did not get any response, Brigadier General Lee Ki-sik told a briefing.
Thirty of the 46 missing are non-commissioned officers. The remaining 16 are conscripted sailors. South Korea's Defence Minister Kim Tae-young told parliament nothing has been ruled out as a possible cause, including the chance the ship was struck by one of the 4,000 North Korean sea mines yet to be recovered after the 1950-53 Korean War.
But under intense pressure to explain the possible cause of the incident, South Korean officials have taken pains not to point the finger at the North. North Korea has made no mention of the ship-sinking incident in its official media but issued a warning about the land border.
"If the US and the South Korean authorities persist in their wrong acts to misuse the DMZ for the inter-Korean confrontation despite our warnings, these will entail unpredictable incidents including the loss of human lives," the North's KCNA news agency quoted a military spokesman as saying.
The Demilitarised Zone is the 4-km (2.5-mile) wide buffer running along the border drawn up under a truce that ended the Korean War, which was fought between US-led UN forces with the South against North Korean and Chinese troops. An unidentified army spokesman of the North's Korean People's Army said South Korea was engaged in "deliberate acts to turn the DMZ into theatre of confrontation with the (North) and a site of psychological warfare" by allowing tours inside the border zone. The warning called on the South to halt tours for journalists to areas of the buffer zone that stretches across the peninsula.