S. Korea Not Punishing Soldiers Who Shot at Plane

SEOUL - South Korea's military said on June 19 it will not punish soldiers who fired at a passenger jet flying from China, mistaking the aircraft for an enemy plane amid sea fog and high tensions with North Korea.

"Early-morning sea fog disrupted their vision... they did what they had been told to do based on military manuals," a Marine Corps spokesman told AFP.

"The action was partly caused by high tension with the North … we for now have no plan to punish them given there was no damage to the plane," he said.

Marines guarding the islands near the tense sea border with the North will be given extra training to distinguish between enemy planes and passenger jets, he said.

Two marines at a guard post on the South's Gyodong island near the disputed Yellow Sea border with the North fired 99 K-2 rifle rounds at the plane, which had 119 people on board, on June 17.

The jet, owned by Seoul-based Asiana Airlines, was descending towards the South's Incheon International Airport when the soldiers opened fire. There was no damage to the plane.

The Airbus 321 was following a normal route from the southwest Chinese city of Chengdu, the company said.

Ties between the two Koreas are at their lowest ebb in more than a decade after Pyongyang announced late last month it was breaking all contacts with the South's conservative government.

Seoul accuses Pyongyang of torpedoing a warship and killing 46 sailors in March 2010 - a charge the communist North angrily denies.

But Pyongyang went on to shell a frontier island off the west coast last November, leaving four South Koreans including two civilians dead.

Then, South Korea's defense minister Kim Kwan-Jin, smarting from criticism of what was seen as the military's feeble and slow response to the attack, told frontline troops to strike back in the event of provocation without waiting for orders from top commanders.

Tension further heightened after nine refugees from the impoverished North crossed the sea border by boat earlier this month to defect to the capitalist South. Seoul last week rejected Pyongyang's demand to return them.

Seoul's policy is to accept all North Koreans who wish to stay in the South, while repatriating those who stray across the sea border by accident.

The arrival in February of a boatload of North Koreans sparked weeks of acrimony. That boat drifted across the Yellow Sea border in thick fog, possibly accidentally.