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SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea fired artillery rounds toward its disputed sea border with South Korea on Wednesday, prompting a barrage of warning shots from the South’s military and raising tensions on the divided peninsula.No casualties or damage were reported, and analysts said the volley — which the North announced was part of a military drill — was likely a move by Pyongyang to highlight the need for a peace treaty to formally end the Korean War.North Korea fired about 30 artillery rounds into the sea from its western coast and the South immediately responded with 100 shots from a marine base on an island near the sea border, an officer at the Joint Chiefs of Staff in Seoul said. The North said it would continue to fire rounds.He said the North’s artillery fire landed in its own waters while the South fired into the air. The officer spoke on condition of anonymity because of department policy.The western sea border — drawn by the American-led U.N. Command at the close of the 1950-53 Korean War — is a constant source of tension between the two Koreas, with the North insisting the line be moved farther south.Navy ships of the two Koreas fought a brief gunbattle in November that left one North Korean sailor dead and three others wounded. They engaged in similar bloody skirmishes in 1999 and 2002.North Korea issued a statement later Wednesday saying it had fired artillery off its coast as part of an annual military drill and would continue doing so.Such drills “will go on in the same waters in the future,” the General Staff of the (North) Korean People’s Army said in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.The North fired more shots later Wednesday, but South Korea didn’t respond, a Defense Ministry official said, also requesting anonymity due to department policy.The exchange of fire came two days after the North designated two no-sail zones in the area, including some South Korean-held waters, through March 29.The North has sent a series of mixed signals to the South recently, combining offers of dialogue on economic cooperation with military threats, including one this month to destroy South Korea’s presidential palace. South Korean Defense Minister Kim Tae-young, meanwhile, angered Pyongyang by saying Seoul’s military should launch a pre-emptive strike if there was a clear indication the North was preparing a nuclear attack.South Korea’s Defense Ministry sent the North’s military a message Wednesday expressing serious concern about the firing and saying it fostered “unnecessary tension” between the two sides.It also urged the North to retract the no-sail zones, calling them a “grave provocation” and a violation of the Korean War armistice. The war ended with a truce, but not a formal peace treaty.Separately, South Korea’s point man on North Korea criticized Pyongyang for raising tension near the sea border.“This kind of North Korean attitude is quite disappointing,” Unification Minister Hyun In-taek told a security forum in Seoul.South Korea’s Yonhap news agency said it was the first time that North Korea has fired artillery toward the sea border. The Joint Chiefs of Staff officer said the North Korean artillery shells were believed to have fallen into the no-sail zones about 1.75 miles north of the maritime border.Top South Korean presidential secretary Chung Chung-kil convened an emergency meeting of security-related officials on behalf of President Lee Myung-bak, who was making a state visit to India, according to the presidential Blue House. It said Lee was informed of the incident.Yoo Ho-yeol, a professor of North Korean studies at Korea University in South Korea, said the North’s action was aimed at highlighting the need for a peace treaty to formally end the Korean War by showing that the peninsula is still a war zone.“It’s applying pressure on the U.S. and South Korea,” Yoo said. He said North Korea also was expressing anger over South Korea’s lukewarm response to a series of recent gestures seeking dialogue.Earlier this month, North Korea called for the signing of a peace treaty and the lifting of sanctions as conditions for its return to stalled nuclear disarmament talks it quit last year.The U.S. and South Korea, however, brushed aside the North’s demands, saying they can happen only after it returns to the disarmament negotiations and reports progress in denuclearization.Despite the exchange of fire, the capitals of the two Koreas were calm.North Koreans in Pyongyang wearing thick winter coats walked briskly through the streets while a female police officer directed traffic and a crowded tram passed by, according to footage shot by broadcaster APTN.The military tensions had little effect on South Korean financial markets. Seoul’s benchmark stock index fell less than 1 percent, while South Korea’s currency, the won, rose against the U.S. dollar.———Associated Press writer Yewon Kang contributed to this report.

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SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea and the U.S. rejected North Korea’s proposal to start peace talks to formally end the Korean War, with Seoul saying Tuesday that can happen only after the North rejoins disarmament talks and reports progress in denuclearization.The North, however, said Monday that its return to those negotiations hinges on building better relations with the United States, including signing a peace treaty. The North also called for the lifting of international sanctions against it.On Tuesday, South Korea’s defense chief repeated his country’s suspicion of such calls from the North, which regularly pushes for a treaty. Kim Tae-young told reporters he will continue to try to find what the North’s true intention is behind the proposal.Kim added that his military is ready to deter any possible North Korean aggression, saying the North “many times in the past offered peace gestures with one hand while on the other committed provocations.”He also repeated a demand from Washington and his own government that any discussion of a peace treaty can only take place after Pyongyang returns to the six-nation nuclear negotiations that it abandoned last year. The allies insist that the North take steps toward disarmament before any concessions on sanctions or a treaty will be made.“I think it’s an issue that we can probably move forward with after the six-party talks are reopened and there is progress in North Korea’s denuclearization process,” Kim Tae-young said.U.S. State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley also brushed off the North’s call. Crowley, speaking Monday in Washington, urged North Korea to return to the talks “and then we can begin to march down the list of issues that we have.”Washington and Pyongyang have never had diplomatic relations because the 1950-53 Korean War ended in a truce, not a peace treaty, thus leaving the peninsula technically at war. North Korea, the U.S.-led United Nations Command and China signed a cease-fire, but South Korea never did.Despite the rejection, the North’s top diplomat in Beijing on Tuesday repeated his country’s position that it will only resume the nuclear talks after international sanctions on it are lifted.“If sanctions are lifted, the six-party talks can be held at once,” North Korean Ambassador to China Choe Jin Su said in a group interview in Beijing, according to Japan’s Kyodo News agency.He also said the conclusion of a peace treaty will help promote denuclearization “at a rapid tempo,” Kyodo reported. “Here I would like to stress ‘at a rapid tempo,’ ” he said.North Korea, which claims it was forced to develop atomic bombs to cope with U.S. threats, called for a peace treaty to be concluded this year, which it emphasized marks the 60th anniversary since the outbreak of the Korean War.The signing of a peace treaty has been discussed at the six-nation disarmament talks before but has always been based on the assumption that there would be progress in North Korea’s denuclearization.Analysts, including Yang Moo-jin of Seoul’s University of North Korean Studies, say that the North this time is trying to bring the issue of a peace treaty to the forefront to dilute the issue of nuclear disarmament.The North quit disarmament talks — which include the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the U.S. — last year in anger over international condemnation of a long-range rocket launch. The country later conducted its second nuclear test, test-launched a series of ballistic missiles and restarted its plutonium-producing facility, inviting widespread condemnation and tighter U.N. sanctions.Separately, South Korean activists unsuccessfully tried Tuesday to send thousands of leaflets by launching balloons to the North to urge it to improve human rights conditions and let residents know about a U.S. Christian missionary believed detained in the communist country. The balloons, however, collapsed before crossing the border amid strong winds blowing from North Korea.Robert Park, a 28-year-old Korean-American from Arizona, slipped into the North in late December to call international attention to the country’s alleged human rights abuses, according to South Korean activists. North Korea subsequently said it had detained an American for entering the country illegally but has not identified him.————Associated Press writers Soo Bin Park in Imjingak, South Korea and Foster Klug in Washington contributed to this report.

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North Korea threatened South Korean ships with possible attack by designating a firing zone along their disputed sea border Monday, raising tensions in an area where a brief but deadly clash erupted last month.

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North Korea Draws a Line in the Water

South Korea is investigating a hacking attack that netted defense plans with the United States and may have been carried out by North Korea. The suspected hacking occurred when a South Korean officer failed to remove a USB device when he switched from a restricted-access intranet to the Internet.

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Hackers Steal US-South Korean Military Secrets

Invasion of Inchon during the Korean War (click to view larger) Pushed to the edge of the Korean penisula by a massive and sustained invasion by the North Korean army, South Korean, US, and UN troops dug in at a perimeter around the city of Pusan. It was the the summer of 1950 and things looked desparate for the allied forces. Then, US General Douglas MacArthur launched a bold counteroffensive – an amphibious landing at the port of Inchon near the 38th parallel. The landing was successful, MacArthur retook South Korea’s capital city of Seoul. The South Korean and allied forces broke through at Pusan and the North Korean army beat a hasty retreat. The tide of the Korean war had turned.

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Storming the Beaches: US Navy’s ACU-1 Craft Get Engine Overhaul

Video: South Korean Hospital

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