Earlier Tuesday, North Korea accused South Korea of sending warships on a daily basis into North Korean territorial waters in the Yellow Sea and of fabricating reports about North Korean incursions.

"Our navy fired warning shots to stop the incursion by a North Korean fishing boat, which has intruded into our waters, ignoring our loud-speaker warning," a Joint Chiefs of Staff spokesman said in Seoul.

The boat penetrated some 200 meters (600 feet) into South Korean waters and was repelled by seven bursts of machine-gun fire from close range, about 270 meters, from a naval vessel cruising close to the Northern Limit Line (NLL), the de-facto inter-Korean maritime border established by the United Nations.

The incursion lasted five minutes before the vessel returned to home waters, he added.

The incident was the latest in a series of incursions from the North reported by South Korean military authorities over the past nine days.

Pyongyang's official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), quoting a navy spokesman, said South Korea was deliberately seeking to raise tensions in the disputed waters in order to provoke a sea clash and blame it on North Korea.

That would provide a pretext for a US attack on the Stalinist state, it said.

Pyongyang says Washington is planning a military strike to resolve the nuclear crisis that began with the US disclosure in October that North Korea had admitted to pursuing nuclear weapons despite a 1994 accord to freeze its nuclear program.

Warning shots were also fired Sunday to deter a North Korean incursion into the same area of the Yellow Sea.

Two South Korean navy boats fired 34 shots -- nine rounds from a 40-millimeter gun and 25 rounds from machine guns -- to force eight North Korean vessels back into their territory, JCS said.

Last week South Korean President Roh Moo-Hyun warned that "special" care was needed to prevent maritime incursions from sparking a sea battle.

Disputes over the NLL, which North Korea has never recognized, and its surrounding rich fishing grounds have led to two naval clashes in recent years.

An inter-Korean skirmish in June 1999 left up to 30 North Koreans believed killed. That was followed by the June 29 clash last year in which six South Korean sailors died.

June is the peak season for crab fishing in the disputed waters off the western coast near Yongpyong island, just south of the NLL, where the sea battles took place.

The North Korean navy spokesman said the South Korean reports of violations were false and issued a protest at the firing of warning shots, "rattling the nerves of KPA (North Korean) soldiers."

"These disturbing developments remind one of last year when the South Korean military authority dispatched warships to the waters under the North's control in an unbroken chain and sparked a naval conflict ..." the spokesman said.

"The South Korean military authority has already worked out a scenario for another 'West Sea skirmish' and is now staging a prelude to it."

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