S Korea says no unusual situation in waters off west coast

SEOUL, Nov. 11 (Xinhua) -- South Korean military authorities on Wednesday said there is no unusual situation in waters off the west coast where navy boats from the South Korea and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) exchanged fires a day earlier.

"There is no particular situation developing," Park Sung-woo, spokesman for the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), told reporters, noting that "the waves are high, also forcing fishing vessels to stay off the waters."

The JCS has sent an investigation team to the area to confirm response measures took by Navy during the clash, so as to learn from the event, the spokesman said.

Meanwhile, the presidential office Cheong Wa Dae said earlier in the day that there has been no sign of retaliatory moves by the DPRK.

Kim Sung-hwan, a South Korean presidential security aide, told the country's Yonhap News Agency that no signs of retaliatory moves by the DPRK side, but security measures have been stepped up.

Security-related source at Cheong Wa Dae also said the government has yet drawn any conclusions about the DPRK's intentions on the clash, but it can be considered as an accidental skirmish in terms of the whole process.

South Korea and the DPRK clashed in naval coast off west coast of the Korean Peninsula near the Northern Limit Line (NLL) area Tuesday morning, but no casualties were reported. The two sides blamed each other for the clash.

Pyongyang has not accepted the NLL which was fixed unilaterally by the U.S.-led United Nations Command after the Korean War (1950-1953), but Seoul holds the NLL as the de-facto western inter-Korean border.