A South Korean fuel tanker sank Sunday after an explosion on board, leaving five crew members dead and six missing, the coastguard said.

The 4,191-ton ship carrying 11 South Koreans and five Myanmar citizens sank near Jawol island, about 32 kilometers (20 miles) off the western port of Incheon where the vessel had unloaded its cargo, a coastguard spokesman told AFP.

North Korea test-fired three short-range missiles into the sea between Japan and the Korean peninsula this week, a report said Friday.

The hermit state lobbed the missiles into the Sea of Japan (East Sea) on Wednesday, Japan's Sankei Shimbun newspaper quoted anonymous Japanese government sources as saying.

North Korea said Thursday the preserved body of Kim Jong-Il would go on permanent display in a Pyongyang palace also housing his father, and memorial towers would be built nationwide to honor the late leader.

"Great leader Kim Jong-Il will be preserved to look the same as when he was alive, at Kumsusan Memorial Palace," the official KCNA news agency reported.

North Korea said Wednesday that before Kim Jong Il's death the United States offered to provide food aid if it halted its uranium enrichment program, and although Pyongyang blasted Washington for "politicizing" food shipments, it appeared to leave the door open for a deal.

Comments about the proposed deal, attributed to an unidentified Foreign Ministry spokesman in Pyongyang, carried an indignant tone, but the North's statement also said it would wait and "see if the United States has a willingness to establish confidence" with North Korea.

North Korea announced Tuesday it would grant an amnesty for prisoners to mark the upcoming birth anniversaries of its late leaders.

The official news agency said a parliamentary decree had authorized the amnesty from February 1, embodying the "noble, benevolent and all-embracing politics of President Kim Il-Sung and leader Kim Jong-Il".

North Korea on Sunday praised its young new leader as "the genius among the geniuses" in military strategy in a film aired on his birthday, the first since he took command after his father's death.

In a documentary about Kim Jong-Un's virtues, state television showed the leader driving a tank and giving orders to troops in artillery, navy and air force units, lauding his "excellent military leadership.”

South Korea and the United States will soon sign a new plan on countering any North Korean attacks, Seoul said Wednesday, amid international wariness over the abrupt leadership transition in Pyongyang.

"We believe there remains a possibility of provocations by the North during the power succession to Kim Jong-Un," deputy defense minister Lim Kwan-Bin told reporters.

Pumping their fists and chanting, tens of thousands of North Koreans packed the snowy main square of the capital Tuesday to pledge their loyalty to new leader Kim Jong Un as the campaign to consolidate his power deepened.

State television also aired footage of Kim's recent visit to an elite tank unit with family and historical ties that showed him interacting with ease with soldiers and carrying out inspections much like his father and grandfather did before him. Soldiers cheered and chanted his name as Kim made an inaugural solo trip to provide "on-the-spot guidance" in the first official documentary of the new leader shown on North Korean TV.

South Korea's president opened the door Monday to possible nuclear talks with North Korea and warned the neighboring country to avoid any provocations, saying the Korean peninsula is at a crucial turning point.

Lee Myung-bak's comments in a nationally televised speech come as the young son of the late Kim Jong Il takes power in North Korea as Supreme Commander of the military and ruling party leader after Kim's death last month. The North vowed Sunday in a New Year's message that it would bolster its military and defend the son, Kim Jong Un, "unto death."

A group of anti-North Korea activists in Seoul on Sunday launched leaflets that criticized the North's new leader and urged its people to rise up against the communist regime, a group leader said.

About 70 activists floated large gas-filled balloons carrying some 50,000 leaflets and instant noodles after an anti-Pyngyang rally at Imjingak, a tourist site near the border north of Seoul, said Choi Woo-Won.