North Korea accused South Korea on Saturday of creating a "touch-and-go" situation along the tense WestSea border, warning that it would retaliate if the South continues to try to keep its "illegal" borderline there.

North Korea has threatened unspecified military actions since South Korea's Navy fired warning shots to drive away several North Korean fishing boats that violated the West Sea border, called the Northern Limit Line (NLL), on Sept. 21.

The North Korean fishing boats retreated after the warning shots. It was the first such incident in the area since November 2010, shortly before the North shelled the nearby front-line island of Yeonpyeong.

In a report carried by North Korea's official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), an unnamed spokesman for the North's powerful National Defense Commission said the South Korean Navy's "reckless military provocations have created a touch-and-go situation in the West Sea of Korea."

Calling the West Sea border an "illegal, ghostlike line," the spokesman warned that South Korea's "efforts to preserve the illegal 'northern limit line' will bring only death to them."

North Korea has never recognized the NLL, which was drawn unilaterally by the U.S.-led United Nations Command when the 1950-53 Korean War ended and is demanding that the line be drawn further south.

The West Sea border is the scene of a number of bloody inter-Korean clashes. The two sides fought naval gun-battles in the area in 1999, 2002 and 2009. In 2010, the North torpedoed a South Korean warship in the area and shelled the Yeonpyeong Island.

This week, South Korea's top general called for heightened alert against possible North Korean provocations in the border area, warning that the recent series of border violations by North Korean fishing boats might be a presage to major military provocations.

"Our military has drastically bolstered its capabilities and readiness to sternly punish enemy provocations with teeth-gritting determination" since the North's two military attacks in 2010, Gen. Jung Seung-jo, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said.

"We have to be thoroughly prepared to get our system to work perfectly in case of enemy provocations," he said, during a ceremony to mark the 49th anniversary of the establishment of the JCS.

  (Yonhap News)