Lieutenant General Park Sung-Choon was fired from his job as head of the defense intelligence agency at the Joint Chiefs of Staff and will retire from the military, they said.

"The defense ministry has dismissed the director of the defense intelligence agency from the post," ministry spokesman Nam Dai-Yeon said in a statement.

It said Park would retire from the military "to take responsibility for causing trouble to the president and the entire military."

The dismissal came after five senior military officials including Park were reprimanded for filing an incomplete report concerning the confrontation between South and North Korean navies earlier this month.

On July 14, South Korean navy ships fired warning shots to drive away a North Korean patrol boat that had intruded into southern waters in the Yellow Sea.

In its report on the incident, the South Korea's navy and Joint Chiefs of Staff omitted to note that ship-to-ship radio contact between the two Koreas had taken place at the time of the confrontation.

Later, Park disclosed to the media the contents of the radio exchanges, which showed that North Korea had sought to mislead the South Korean navy by claiming that the intruding North Korean naval vessel was a Chinese fishing boat.

Park reportedly said that he had leaked the information in an effort to justify the South Korean navy's handling of the confrontation, including the decision to fire warning shots.

The navies of South and North Korean agreed last month to open radio contact for the first time in an effort to reduce tension and the chance of confrontation along the disputed maritime border in the Yellow Sea, scene of fatal naval clashes in the past.

WAR.WIRE