South Korean coast guard fires 249 warning shots at Chinese fishing boats

“New Era” in China-South Korean relations looks a lot like old one

This “new era” of China-South Korean relations continues to get off to an inauspicious start with South Korea’s coast guard announcing that they fired almost 250 gunshots above a group of Chinese fishing boats.

The coast guard said that a fleet of 44 Chinese fishing boats “swarmed around” a Korean patrol boat in the country’s waters on Tuesday. The boats ignored repeated warnings to steer clear and instead tried to ram the coast guard vessel, which began firing warning shots, popping off 249 rounds before the fishing boats finally retreated.

Thanks to disastrous overfishing nearby, Chinese fishermen have been forced to sail farther and farther away from home for a good catch. In recent years, they have been detained for fishing illegally in waters around the world, from Russia to Argentina, South Africa to the Galapagos.

However, they most frequently run into trouble in the waters off South Korea, in confrontations with the country’s coast guard which sometimes turn violent and even deadly. Last September, for example, three Chinese fishermen were killed in a fire after coast guard crew threw flash grenades into a room where they were hiding on their boat.

A few months later, South Korea’s coast guard fired machine gun warning shots at another trespassing and uncooperative Chinese vessel, causing China to declare that it was “strongly dissatisfied” with South Korea’s use of force.

This latest incident has provoked a similar response with China’s Foreign Ministry expressing its “serious concern.”

“We hope that South Korea appropriately handles the relevant issue and in the course of law enforcement takes no extreme actions that endanger people’s safety,” spokeswoman Hua Chunying told reporters earlier today at a regular press conference in Beijing.

Of course, this follows China and South Korea pledging to normalize relations after a one-year standoff over the THAAD missile defense system. These efforts appear to have been stymied somewhat by the beating of a Korean journalist in Beijing and the fact that China continues to ban tour groups from visiting South Korea.