"Currently, pertinent authorities are investigating the fishermen," a North Korean official in charge of the East Sea (Sea of Japan) district was quoted as saying in a message faxed to the South.

"The boat and its crew will be handled in accordance with the results of the probe," he said, without giving further details of the investigation.

The message is the first response from the North to the South's appeal to return the boat and the fishermen.

They were seized Thursday after their vessel strayed into North Korean waters off the peninsula's east coast.

Earlier on Friday, South Korea expressed hope that Pyongyang would soon return the captured fishing boat and its four crew members, insisting the encroachment had been unintentional.

"It was accidental and we've urged the North to return the boat and crew at the earliest possible date," Unification Ministry spokesman Chun Hae-Sung told reporters in Seoul.

"There are inter-Korean traditions on how to handle accidental sea border crossings. Therefore, we hope that the North will take this humanitarian measure at an early date."

Chun said navigational errors led the 29-ton squid fishing vessel to drift into North Korean waters Thursday. It was seized by a navy patrol boat and taken to port, according to Seoul.

North Korea was relatively quick in returning two South Korean trawlers that strayed into its waters in 2005 and 2006. But tensions have been raised this year after nuclear and missile tests by the communist state.

North Korea has been holding a South Korean worker arrested at a Seoul-invested industrial estate in Kaesong on March 30 for allegedly insulting the North's regime and urging a North Korean worker to defect to the South.

North Korea is also holding two US journalists captured at its border with China on March 17 and jailed for 12 years on charges of committing hostile acts.

Analysts were divided on how Pyongyang would handle the latest incident.

"Because of the tense inter-Korean ties, there is the possibility of the North holding the crew for a long time as in the case of the South Korean worker," professor Nam Joo-Hong of Kyonggi University told the Dong-A daily.

But Suh Jae-Jean, president of the state-financed Korea Institute for National Unification, said the North was "highly likely to release them within a few days" as it wants to avoid worsening its international isolation.

North Korea has lashed out with angry rhetoric after being slapped with tougher UN sanctions for carrying out a second nuclear test on May 25.

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