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Six patrol boats from the Korea Coast Guard and seven from the Japan Coast Guard remained locked in a farcical face-off on Thursday morning, both sides lashed to a small Korean trawler suspected of illegally fishing in Japan's exclusive economic zone (EEZ).
The site of the deadlock is 16 miles (25.6 km) off Ganjeol Point, Ulju County -- 18 miles inside Korea's EEZ but not inside its territorial waters, so the entrance of the Japanese patrol boats was not illegal. The UN says an exclusive economic zone ¡°shall not extend beyond 200 nautical miles from the baselines from which the breadth of the territorial sea is measured¡±, but disagreements over where exactly that is abound worldwide.
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Korean coast guards (right) are confronting Japanese coast guards over a South Korean fishing boat that the Japanese claim had fished in Japanese waters off Ganjeol Point, Ulju County on Wednesday.
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The Korea Coast Guard mobilized its boats after receiving word from the 77-ton eel trawler Sinpung-ho 502 just after midnight on Wednesday that Japanese patrol boats were trying to seize the vessel. They arrived at the scene around 2:00 a.m. to discover the Shinpung-ho being chased by the Japanese, and tied the trawler to the starboard side of a Korean patrol boat to thwart Japanese attempts to seize it. Japanese patrol boats that had been chasing the Shinpung-ho in turn tethered themselves to the starboard side of the trawler.
As of 6:00 a.m. Thursday, six South Korean patrol ships and seven Japanese coast guard vessels were involved in the standoff and the deadlock was in its 28th hour.
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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