By The South Korean Navy was wise to move their ships out of the area as the only way the North Koreans would be able to sink a South Korean ship would be by using its land based anti-ship missiles:
North Korea’s brief activation Sunday of its fire-control radar system forced South Korea to quickly move its patrol boats, military sources said.
The radar system covers the disputed western sea border, and South Korea needed to get the boats away from the North’s shore-based artillery and missiles, Yonhap reported from Seoul.
After one hour, the situation returned to normal, but the South Korean military stayed on high alert, the news agency reported. [UPI]
3:58 am on November 16th, 2009 1
When you escalate the cat and mouse to weapons that operate beyond line of sight, civilians may get caught in the crossfire. Military ships can know when they are being painted with weapons' radars. Fishing and merchant ships can not.
If a civilian ship inadvertently encroaches on a line, we may have an incident.
4:08 am on November 16th, 2009 2
Come to think of it, it might be an interesting turn of events if the North Koreans missiled a Chinese ship.
6:14 am on November 16th, 2009 3
Thanks for elaborating on this a little. I noted it in story #4 yesterday and speculated on it a little myself, but I'm surprised that it has gotten almost no attention in the K-blogs.