SEOUL, South Korea - North Korea's military said Friday that four South Korean fishermen seized a day earlier after their boat strayed into North Korean waters remained under investigation, government officials in Seoul said.
The 29-ton boat drifted north Thursday after the satellite navigation system apparently malfunctioned. North Korean soldiers towed the vessel to the eastern port of Jangjon, just north of the border, South Korean officials said.
North Korea's military said in a written message to the South that "the issue of crew members and the vessel will be dealt with according to the outcome of the investigation," according to the Unification Ministry in Seoul.
Some analysts said the North could use the fishermen to exert pressure on Seoul amid badly strained ties between the two Koreas, which technically remain at war because their three-year conflict ended in a truce in 1953, not a peace treaty.
Unification Minister Hyun In-taek said he viewed the North's quick reaction as positive but was cautious, saying he will wait and see how things will play out, according to his spokeswoman Lee Jong-joo.
"I hope that my husband and three other crew members will quickly return home along with their boat," Lee Ah-na, the wife of the boat's skipper Park Kwang-sun, told the Associated Press from the eastern port of Geojin, just south of the border.
Maritime incidents involving fishing boats and other commercial vessels occur from time to time. While most are resolved amicably, two skirmishes involving military ships twice have sparked deadly naval battles, in 1999 and 2002.
North Korea, censured by the U.N. Security Council for a spate of nuclear and missile tests his year, has custody of a South Korean employee of the two Koreas' joint industrial park in the border town of Kaesong, in addition to two American journalists sentenced in June to 12 years of hard labor.
Unification Ministry spokesman Chun Hae-sung called on Pyongyang to quickly return the fishermen and their boat on humanitarian grounds, citing Seoul's fast repatriation of North Korean fishing boats that have drifted into its waters in recent years.
North Korean officials have provided no word on the fishermen's condition, or any other details, the ministry said.
South Korea allowed a North Korean patrol vessel to tow away a North Korean fishing boat that crossed into the countries' disputed western maritime border on Thursday, according to South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff.
"In similar cases in the past, the North returned fishermen after four to five days of investigation," said Yang Moo-jin, a professor at Seoul's University of North Korean Studies. "But considering the current tension between the two sides, it is possible for the North to hold them much longer, citing its investigation."
Relations between the two Koreas have been tense since a pro-U.S., conservative government took office in Seoul last year advocating a tougher policy on the North.
Pyongyang cut off nearly all ties in retaliation, and halted major joint projects except for an industrial complex located just across the border in the North.
However, North Korea has been holding a South Korean worker since March for allegedly denouncing Pyongyang's political system. Seoul repeatedly has demanded his release but the North has not allowed access to him.
American reporters Laura Ling and Euna Lee also were arrested in March, accused of entering the country illegally from China and engaging in "hostile acts." The women, reporting for former U.S. Vice President Al Gore's Current TV media venture, were sentenced to prison terms in June. The United States is urging North Korea to release them.
Dozens of anti-North Korean activists held a rally in central Seoul for a second consecutive day to denounce North Korean leader Kim Jong Il and to call for the immediate release of the fishing boat and crew. They burned a North Korean flag, a portrait of Kim and a portrait of a man thought to be his third son and possible successor, Kim Jong Un.
