North Korean Envoy to the UN: They Started It

North Korea's deputy ambassador to the United Nations had no apologies Tuesday afternoon for his country's part in the skirmish that left two South Korean soldiers dead and several wounded.

"We warned them several times," Deputy Ambassador Pak Tok-hun said on the side of a committee meeting. He claimed that a "dangerous" South Korean military exercise in a disputed area provoked the exchange.

"They fired dozens of gun shots in the territorial waters of my country, so we responded by similar fire for self defense," he said.

Pak added that his country would like to resolve tensions through direct talks with the South. "But we are not afraid of any kind of conflict if they insist to inflict it upon us," he warned.

The UN Security Council held informal consultations in the morning, where their rotating president, Ambassador Lyall Grant of the UK, told reporters that they will discuss the incident as well as new revelations about a North Korean nuclear facility.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, a native of South Korea, issued a statement in the morning calling the attack "one of the gravest incidents since the end of the Korean War."