South Koreans aim from a helicopter at a pirate ship about 23 miles south of Aden port in Yemen. A South Korean Navy warship rescued a North Korean freighter by driving away a pirate ship chasing it off the coast of Somalia.
(South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff/AP)High seas détente: S. Korea rescues N. Korean ship from Somali pirates
United by a common enemy, South Korea's Navy moves to protect a North Korean cargo ship.
By Donald Kirk | Correspondent 05.04.09
SEOUL –Six decades of enmity momentarily melted Monday when a South Korean destroyer on patrol in the Gulf of Aden responded Monday to a distress call.
A North Korean vessel was under threat of attack by Somali pirates. The captain of the South Korean ship dispatched a Lynx helicopter “as soon as our destroyer received a call for help from the North Korean vessel,” Yonhap News quoted a South Korean defense official as saying.
No matter that the same day, North Korea’s party newspaper, Rodong Sinmun, was warning of “military clashes between the two sides.” Tensions have been escalating for more than a year, threatening the armistice that ended the Korean war in 1953.
The newspaper cautioned South Korea against participating in the US-inspired Proliferation Security Initiative, under which scores of countries cooperate in stopping shipments of nuclear materiel and missiles, saying that could “escalate to a full-blown war.”
As the British-made South Korean helicopter hove into view of the beleaguered North Korean ship, 23 miles off the coast of Yemen, the pirates saw it coming, machine-guns protruding. That was enough for the pirates to flee, according to South Korea’s Defense Ministry.
The North Korean media showed no awareness of the event, but a South Korean spokesman said the North Korean commander messaged thanks to the destroyer, Munmu the Great. Its name honors the seventh-century king who unified the Korean peninsula for the first time.
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2. A Chen | 05.08.09
#1, actually, sniper(s) in the air were present. There is another similar photo from the incident of a Korean sniper taking aim a true sniper rifle out of a helicopter at what is reported to be a pirate boat in the seas. Not sure why they labeled this machine-gun crew as “snipers” though.
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1. Jonathan Entner | 05.04.09
The picture caption, the byline, and the article all say “sniper”, but the picture does not show a sniper, but a machine-gun and crew, which is normal armament for a helicopter such as this. Just because the US Navy used SEAL snipers in one operation doesn’t mean that every military unit operating against pirates is a sniper. Also, I believe the name of the helicopter is “Lynx” (as in the large feline) not “Linx” (as in the name for multiple network-equipment and other companies). You lose credibility by not having the details right. I will say that the picture over the shoulder of the ROK machine-gunners is a good one, assuming it is the pirate ship in the distance as implied by the caption, and not the DPK freighter being rescued.