Seoul: North Korea said on Friday that four South Koreans were in custody on suspicion of entering the country illegally.
The arrests would be the latest detentions of foreigners accused of sneaking into communist North Korea. Weeks earlier, an American missionary who crossed into the country from China was released after 43 days in North Korean custody.
North Korean officials "recently detained four South Koreans who illegally entered" the country, the state-run Korean Central News Agency said on Friday in a dispatch from Pyongyang. "They are now under investigation."
The brief report did not identify the South Koreans or say when they allegedly entered North Korea.
The National Intelligence Service, Seoul's top spy agency, said it was seeking to confirm the report.
A spokesman for South Korea's Unification Ministry said officials had seen the KCNA dispatch and were trying to confirm the details.
"At this moment, our ministry is trying to ensure the safety of citizens in North Korea," spokesman Chun Hae-sung told reporters.
The reported detentions come a day after North Korea warned it would wage a "powerful" attack if South Korea and the US forge ahead with planned joint military exercises next month.
South Korea and the US, which maintains 28,500 troops in the South, plan to hold annual drills starting March 8. The North sees the exercises as preparation for an invasion, but the US and South Korea say the manoeuvres are purely defensive.
The two Koreas remain in a state of war because their three-year conflict ended in 1953 with a truce, not a peace treaty.
Bureau Report
First Published: Friday, February 26, 2010, 12:40